THE GATEKEEPER
Kate Fall

Copyright

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First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020

Copyright © Kate Fall 2020

Kate Fall asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

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Ebook Edition © 2020 ISBN: 9780008347819

Version: 2020-03-12

Praise for The Gatekeeper

‘Kate Fall was in many ways the heart and soul of the Cameron operation, a genuinely insightful and fascinating account of what it is like to be at the heart of power.’

Tom Bradby, ITV News at Ten

‘Kate Fall has a exquisite eye for telling details and a rare ability to express it.’

Anthony Seldon, Historian

‘For a decade, Kate Fall was the most influential woman in British politics. This is her fascinating, honest and sometimes hilarious story of life behind the door of No. 10.’

Alice Thomson, The Times

‘Kate Fall was David Cameron’s indispensable right-hand woman as he ascended from Leaer of the Opposition to Prime Minister. A highly readable account of the rise and fall of the Cameroons, which historians will scour … a touching account of the demands that modern politics makes on people and their families. I read it, gripped, in one sitting,’

Niall Ferguson, Milbank Family Senior Fellow, the Hoover Institution, Stanford

‘Kate Fall was not just the gatekeeper; she was at the heart of the No. 10 operation.’

Camilla Cavendish, Financial Times

Dedication

For Olivia and Guy

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for The Gatekeeper

Dedication

Introduction

PART 1 JOURNEY TO POWER

1. Blackpool

2. ‘Come with Me’

3. The Clunking Fist

4. Plan A

5. The Giant Due Date

6. The Worm

7. The Election Bus

8. A Coalition is Born

PART 2 NO. 10

9. Welcome to the Bunker

10. How No. 10 Works

11. The House, a Home

12. Men and Meetings

13. Circle of Trust

14. On Our Watch

15. The Pitfalls of Foreign Travel

16. A Special Relationship

Photographs

17. Judgement

18. Phone-Hacking

19. The Doldrums

20. Reshuffles and Revenge

21. Scotland

22. Protect and Defend

23. Happy Warrior

24. The Sweetest Victory of All

25. Storm Clouds

PART 3 EUROPE

26. Journey to Bloomberg

27. Spitzenkandidaten

28. Starting Gun

29. Battle Lines

30. There is More That Unites Us

31. Referendum

32. Fallout

Afterword

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

For eleven years, I lived my life as one of David Cameron’s closest advisors. In No. 10 I sat right outside the door of the Prime Minister’s office, earning myself the title of ‘gatekeeper’. David called me his wingman. I wrote this book with the hope that it would shed some light on the world behind the public façade. The ‘blood, sweat and tears’. The chaos and camaraderie. The friendships and fall outs. The victories and regrets. I want to share with others what it is like behind that famous door of No. 10, and behind the less famous but more critical one to the Prime Minister’s den. And, what it feels like to live your life at the heart of power.

No. 10 is more than just an office for those who work there; it takes up so much of your time that it comes to signify a way of life. The pace is relentless and the work all-consuming. The time I spent working on ‘Project Cameron’ covered a good part of my daughter’s and son’s childhood – they were 6 and 3 when I started, and 17 and 14 when it was all over.

At its core, No. 10 is a 24/7, Rolls-Royce operation, whose purpose is to support the prime minister of the day. Ed Llewellyn and I were essentially there to run the show – in other words, to help Prime Minister David Cameron run an effective government: the strategy, the policies, the communication plans, the campaigns. We were involved in making decisions about what David was going to do and say each day, and for what purpose. We brokered relationships with the Cabinet, party, and others. Sometimes we were a shoulder to cry on, sometimes the deliverer of bad news. I sat at the centre of the spider’s web, working with some of the brightest and the best people I have known.

I attended nearly every meeting with David. I spoke to him beforehand about what we were trying to achieve, and afterwards about what we wanted actioned. In the end, everything comes down to your judgement. Does the PM want to hear your view, day after day?

As one of David’s closest advisors, I wasn’t afraid to ‘give it to him straight’. Sometimes you have to close the door and battle out the issues in a very small group, trusting that nothing of what is said will leave the room. This is why there is always ‘an inner circle’ of some sort around a prime minister, even if it forms to the consternation of some of those who do not find themselves in the room when the decisions are being made. As gatekeeper, one of my jobs was to decide who was in that room.

But the gatekeeper doesn’t just manage access of people; you also moderate the flow of information. What is the priority today? You are there to manage the PM’s time and attention.

The atmosphere of any No. 10 ultimately comes from the boss. Is it an effective, punctual, and decent operation that operates as one team? Or is it leaky, bitchy, and handicapped by rival factions? Can you see the PM if and when you need, or is there a bunker mentality? Here again, the skill of the gatekeeper is knowing when to keep the door shut – and also when to open it.

We were a close team, grounded by strong ties of friendship and political philosophy. We spent over a decade in each other’s company, so it is not surprising that we shared so much – not just in our political journey, but also in life. We weathered many highs and lows. Successes and failures. Births and deaths. The absurd and the tragic. We faced difficult decisions to send British troops to fight; we made attempts to hold the peace. There are decisions we are still proud of – and a few of which we are less so.

We were elected in 2010 to fix a problem: to restore economic security amidst the uncertainty caused by the global financial crisis, and the worst recession since the Second World War. From 2010 to 2015, while in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, we were a government prepared to make difficult, unpopular decisions for the long-term good of the country, working to put Britain’s finances back on track. We successfully spurred a recovery in jobs, though it was slower in boosting wages than we wanted. We tried to do other things too: reform schools, champion equality with gay marriage, stand by the world’s poor, and open up a conversation about what is fair in welfare. Despite our differences, the economic rescue plan was the glue that bound the Coalition over five years.

In the pages that follow, I describe how we grappled with and tried to confront these big questions rather than dodge them. We believed that if you sweep difficult issues under the carpet, they have a way of coming back to bite you.

I try to show how and why, during our time in power, Britain was beginning to face an impasse in Europe. The other countries of the EU were hellbent on going in one direction, propping up the euro, while we were striving to carve out a different relationship. The financial crisis drove the Eurozone countries closer together, and encouraged migrants to come to Britain seeking work when our economy grew stronger. Meanwhile, those who had paid for the financial crisis at home didn’t seem to be benefitting from our recovery. And all of this was playing out against the backdrop of a mandate that was fraying.

Our unexpected victory in the general election of 2015 gave us the prospect of five more years in power. We thought we were riding high. Instead, we crashed into a wall at full speed, falling out of Downing Street with all the harshness of abrupt defeat. Our strategy – to call out our relationship in Europe, and resolve it once and for all (by staying in) – failed. The sweetness of the election was short-lived, followed by the sadness, regret, and division surrounding the referendum.

I HAVE WORKED IN politics since I left university. I could have avoided it altogether and instead become a classical musician, which was my earlier trajectory – and might have been a more sensible decision. But I come from a political family (albeit with a small p). My father was a diplomat. His generation were the Cold War warriors, and his last post was as ambassador to Moscow, just after the break-up of the Soviet Union.

If I had to pinpoint the moment when my keen interest in politics began, it would have to be at a so-called ‘informal’ Sunday lunch at Lord Carrington’s house, Bledlow. It was 1981, and I was about 12 years old. We were there because Lord Carrington was the Foreign Secretary and my father’s then boss. At one point, Lord Carrington left the table to take a phone call. It was Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

When he returned, he turned to me and asked my view on the latest foreign debacle. He was intently interested in my answer – or at least that’s how it seemed to me – and that was the beginning of my love affair with politics. When the time came, I chose to read PPE at Oxford instead of going to music school.

In 1996, at the end of the Major years, I started working at the Conservative Research Department as the desk officer for Europe. I was the junior member of the political team around the relevant Cabinet ministers, and I was responsible for briefing MPs on European issues. Apart from one other woman, the desk officers were an army of competitive young men, many of whom were eyeing a career in the House for themselves. But after nearly two decades of Tory rule, the party had begun to feel stale and tired, especially in comparison to the energetic young Tony Blair. The Major years came to an end with the massive Blair victory in 1997 and my situation changed.

With Prime Minister Blair came over a hundred female Labour MPs, who were irritatingly nicknamed ‘Blair’s babes’. The Conservatives had just thirteen women in Parliament. So, in 2001, with William Hague as our party leader and an election looming, there was a push to encourage more Tory women to be MPs. Some of my friends and direct contemporaries were selected to fight safe seats. I was on the candidates’ list. But although I still loved politics, I was not convinced that I wanted to be an MP. Plus, I was pregnant with my second child. I had faced a constituency association while pregnant with my first. The good people of Derbyshire had eyed my stomach and asked my husband if he was the candidate. I decided not to stand.

Not long afterwards, David Cameron, whom I had known since Oxford, offered me a job on his campaign in Witney, Oxfordshire. So, in the early hours of 8 June 2001, heavily pregnant, I sat on an uncomfortable chair in a leisure centre sports hall as the count drew to an end and David was declared Witney’s new MP.

That was my first campaign for David Cameron, but there would be many more. When David decided to run for Leader of the Opposition, he approached me again.

Then, five years later, life changed once more. It became normal for me to go home to my children and walk round the park with them, waiting for my phone to ring: ‘No. 10 Switch here. Prime Minister on the line.’

THE HOLY GRAIL OF prime ministerial ambitions is to make a dignified exit at the time of their choosing. But more often than not, the exit is abrupt and unexpected. Suddenly the solidarity of purpose disappears. The team you have spent an uncountable amount of time with is disbanded, and everyone goes their separate ways. I imagine that it is always a shock, and the events of June 2016 were shocking indeed. On leaving No. 10, I found myself in a ditch, of sorts, and so I began to write my way out of it.

I wrote in the hope that I could shed some light on the world behind the façade of politics, to share with others what it is like behind that famous door. The blood, sweat, and toil. The chaos and comradery. The victories and regrets. The friendships and fallings-out. I wrote about my own experience of being part of a dedicated, focused team during the Cameron years, as well as more generally about what life is really like at the heart of power. I wrote about why the atmosphere of No. 10 matters, about how it feels to live your life at such a pace under so much pressure, much of it private, yet under the public gaze. Mine is a book which focuses on the political plumbing.

The first part of the story starts with pizza nights around the kitchen table as we planned a leadership campaign. We won control of the party and then tried to change it before the party decided they’d had enough of us. It goes on to fighting the 2010 general election, with all the stress, hilarity, boredom, and terror of being out on the road with the candidate in the full glare of the public eye. This was amplified by it being the year of the first X Factor-style TV debates.

The second part looks at life at the heart of No. 10: how it feels on your first day when you realise this is where you work now. Who really runs No. 10 and how do they do it? Why does a circle of trust always form around a prime minister, and how can we make sure the important voices from outside it are still heard? In the final part, the story explores our relationship with Europe, from the creation of the European Union, the Eurosceptics and the Europhiles to the fallout of the 2016 EU referendum.

WE HEAR A LOT about unelected advisors these days, the so-called ‘spads’. This is the special political advisor who, for a time, acquires a semi-official status in government. At the most senior level, they form part of a prime minister’s inner circle. I was a spad. They may be amongst the most powerful people in the country, yet you might never have never heard of them. (If you have, though, don’t muddle power with profile; the two don’t necessarily go together.) Their power comes from one source only: their boss. They are unelected and their sole function is to serve their boss. Those who forget this do so at their peril.

Spads are not a new invention. They have always existed in some form and always will, because a prime minister needs a close team of people who they can trust. Kings and queens had similar coteries of advisors or courtiers. Like today’s spads, some of them got too powerful, too famous, or fell out of favour. Thomas Cromwell is perhaps the best-known spad in history.

A wider group of spads serves Cabinet ministers. Usually there are two spads for each minister – one to do the press and one to check the policy. They help their boss keep track of the large political operation that runs alongside their governmental role. Good luck telling them that their role is to support the prime minister of the day.

DO POLITICS AND FRIENDSHIP go together? I used to think so, but now I am less sure. Politics tests friendships with its conflicting priorities of loyalty, belief, and personal ambition. Sometimes you have to choose, and it’s not always pretty. I examine what happens when, as they say, the shit hits the fan. How does the PM execute a reshuffle and, more importantly, cope with the aftermath, which can morph into revenge?

All premierships are a race against time, where you try to do the things you said you would do while simultaneously sorting out all the other stuff you didn’t expect, which hurtles towards you from left field at great speed. The sand flows through the egg timer faster and faster – or so it feels – whilst the electorate eyes you up, wondering if they can bear seeing your face all over their TV for another five years. If you last that long, that is, because your future also depends on the people sitting on the benches behind you, the so-called faithful supporters, who are wondering the same. Over time, the sentiment of goodwill and loyalty towards a leader fades, as the number of those fired, added to the number of those who never got hired, reaches a critical mass. Then, like bees starved of royal jelly, they swarm in hope of better treatment by a new queen.

There have always been powerful, though mostly invisible, women running Downing Street, and in part this book tells how it felt to be one of them, working in what is still a relatively male world. I chose to work behind the scenes, but we still need more female MPs. So, I want to encourage women who set their sights on politics – whether in the front line or as an advisor – to be brave and push back on what can be a latent sense that a man’s view carries greater weight in the world of politics. This includes not getting stuck in jobs that pay you to ‘do things’ rather than ‘think things’, if that’s not what you want. There is still a sense that some topics are for women and others for men, as there is with domestic tasks. Men take out the rubbish and make fiscal policy; women do the dishes and look after ‘women’s issues’. At the time of writing, we have had two female prime ministers but, I wonder, when will we see a female Chancellor of the Exchequer?

POLITICS IS WAR WITH little peace. You fight for what you believe in and try to do the right thing, often to find your work is then unravelled by those who follow. And it is not just what you do that matters; it is how you do it.

Decency and tolerance in government matters. So does trying to rule for all, not just the majority. I have tried to show that the centre ground that we inhabited with our brand of modern progressive compassionate Conservatism was not a place of political compromise and watered-down policy designed to appease everyone, but rather a place of bold, brave, creative thinking about how to resolve our problems. And for a while, it resonated with the electorate.

Yet, alas, the Brexit fog clouds these months and years after our departure. As with all major political events, there is fury, division, and blame. The chaos and antipathy weigh heavily. Did David get it all right? Of course not. But find me someone else with the temperament and depth of judgement more suited to the leadership of our country. David the decisive leader; George Osborne the creative political intellect – this partnership dominated a decade of politics. Britain will wait a long time for another government that is as decent and effective, one that can achieve so much.

I believe that we were a government with a sense of purpose, a group of people who weren’t afraid to do what we believed was right to turn our country around. Some accused our team of being too close, but that seems like a small criticism when set against the deeply divided politics of today. Personally, all I can do is hope I did my best for my boss and the country – and didn’t let it go to my head.

It was the greatest privilege of my life to work in David Cameron’s No. 10 with some of the best and brightest people I have known. It was certainly life-altering. There will always be regrets; otherwise, you won’t have learnt anything. It was a roller-coaster ride, but I would not have missed it for the world.

PART 1

— 1 —
BLACKPOOL

Blackpool, October 2003. I have not been to a party conference since having had my two children, and I’ve left my job working at the Conservative Research Department, so I don’t strictly need to be here. However, I have decided to make a brief trip up because I am still officially on the parliamentary candidates’ list. I feel out of place wandering around the neglected conference hall wearing an old work dress, which is now a little tight-fitting. Why ever did I think I ought to come?

There’s no getting away from it: the Conservative Party Conference is a ghost town. Morale is low; the delegates seem quieter than usual. It’s no wonder. The Conservatives, stubbornly polling around 32 per cent of the vote, with a historically small number of Tory MPs, have now lost two general elections to New Labour and are well on their way to losing a third. Nobody seems to know what to do about it. Under Iain Duncan Smith, they have begun to look less and less like a party of government and more and more like a political movement. The party is languishing in a vacuum of leadership and of ideas. There is a sense that it has turned in on itself, forgotten how to reach out beyond its base, or even that it wants to.

A party conference is not just an opportunity to cheer up the party faithful. It is supposed to mark the start of the political year, the moment the leadership sets its course. And, especially if you are in opposition, it is a rare moment in the sun. For a few golden days, the spotlight will fall on you as the media gather to hear what you have to say. This is your chance to set out your stall to the party but also to the public at large. Above all, party conference week is show time (accompanied of course by a series of alcohol-infused, gossip-rendering after-parties).

Blackpool, with its strings of lights, amusement arcades, and air of faded grandeur, is a peculiar host. It seems incongruous when hordes of politicians, journalists, lobbyists, and activists, old and young, pour in to this unassuming town, mostly populated by pensioners, filling up every hotel, hostel, and bed and breakfast. But there is something about the freshness of the coastal wind and the kindness of the reception we receive that helps to propel us through an exhausting and totally unhealthy week. I loathe and love conference week in equal measure. Though this year I feel a particularly deep sense of relief when, exhausted, I get on the train to leave.

IDS lasts barely another month. Without a contest, the Tory MPs rally around to crown Michael Howard as the new party leader in November. Michael manages to take control of the party and draw it back, for which he deserves great credit. But while he saves the party from political oblivion, he does not transform it into something new and electable. That is to be another man’s job.

Michael announces he is standing down the day after he is defeated in the 2005 election, calling a leadership election for early autumn. There is a growing movement, especially amongst the 1992 and 1997 intakes of MPs, to avoid a full-blown competition. They want a coronation rather than a contest. And they want someone of their own political persuasion; the focus falls on David Davis. But there is pushback from those who think the party should be given a real choice. After all, they didn’t get to choose Michael Howard. There are also some who actively don’t want DD. He is not without talent, but he is the sort of old-school Tory – reciting a mantra of tax cuts, tough on crime, and Europe – that the electorate has rejected three times already. There is a mounting view that something more innovative and radical is needed if the Conservatives are ever going to be a party of government again.

Under pressure, Michael moves the date for the leadership election back to December. This gives an outsider a chance.

I HAVE BEEN WORKING as part of Michael Howard’s team, juggling a role in his office covering foreign affairs and business liaison with a job working as the director of Atlantic Partnership, a bipartisan think-tank that Michael himself set up. I run the think-tank from my attic, which has the advantage of allowing me to see my young children. On his return from nursery, my son makes his way upstairs and hovers at the bottom of the loft ladder. ‘Are you there, Mummy?’ He waits patiently for me to climb down and keep him company while he eats his lunch. I often return to my attic after tucking him and his sister up in bed. I feel a bit stretched, between the two roles and, most importantly, being a mum. But at least I am busy doing what I love.

All this is about to change.

One day in June, I am getting my lunch at the canteen in Portcullis House. I am not overly fond of the place, which serves large quantities of ‘school food’ and has yet to encounter the lettuce leaf, but I like the atmosphere. Everyone eats here – MPs, researchers (many barely out of university), parliamentary assistants. It is a place of chance meetings and political gossip.

In the canteen, I spot David Cameron. He is in his first term as MP for Witney and a friend since we both read PPE at Oxford, a year apart. And I had helped him win the seat in 2001.

‘What are you up to?’ David asks.

I tell him we are winding down Michael’s office in preparation for his departure, which is sad. The leadership election has just been announced and I have heard that David is considering stepping forward to offer a more centrist, modern agenda. This seems as good a time as any to offer my twopence worth, so I do. ‘Oh, and by the way, I think you should run for leader,’ I say. I then add – with possibly not enough consideration – ‘I’ll help you if you do.’

I am not the only person urging him to run. David has a natural gravitas and authority about him that seems to be lacking elsewhere in the party. In this respect, he looks like a potential winner. But he is unsure. It does seem like a tall order that someone who has only been an MP for one term, who has not yet reached their fortieth birthday, should seek to be party leader. Audacious even. But who else is there? If the party really do want a game changer, then it’s not going to be DD.

David takes his time. While he ponders whether or not to run, he accepts a job as Shadow Education Secretary in Michael’s post-election Shadow Cabinet. George Osborne, who also became an MP in 2001, in the same intake as David, becomes Shadow Chancellor, and asks me to come and work for him. With over four years in age between them, David and George did not overlap at university in Oxford, or even in their previous jobs at the Conservative Research Department, but they have become close as new MPs. They live near each other in west London, bicycling in together most mornings.

I’ve known George a long time – since my first job in the Conservative Research Department, in fact. The dream of every desk officer was to be a special advisor to a Cabinet minister. I asked around about how this could be done. You need to nurture a friendship with an MP ‘going up’, I was told. Otherwise, just send in your CV when there’s a reshuffle and hope for the best.

When William Waldegrave was replaced by Douglas Hogg at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in 1995, I wondered if it might be my opportunity. Admittedly, having grown up in cities, I didn’t know much about farming. But, as the desk officer covering the brief for Europe, my remit included agriculture and animals, so I was certainly learning, and I reckoned I should be in with a chance.

I had decided to try the idea out on the boy in the office next to mine. George was highly regarded in CRD as the prestigious head of ‘political section’, a job which had until recently been inhabited by another talented young man called David Cameron. ‘I am thinking about applying to be a special advisor to Douglas Hogg,’ I said. ‘Do you think it is a crazy idea, given that, you know, farming is not exactly my thing?’

‘No – it’s a very good idea,’ he said. ‘There’s just one hitch.’

‘What’s that?’ I asked.

‘I’ve already got the job.’

A WEEK AFTER I accept the job with George, David rings. ‘I’ve decided to stand – will you come and help me run the campaign?’

‘What sort of timing?’ I ask.

‘Tomorrow,’ he says.

I speak to George, who agrees I should help David, and then come and work for him afterwards.

It has been an honour to work for Michael Howard, and I feel disloyal as I pack up my things. And there is awkwardness too, as I know that I would not have been David’s first choice. Rachel Whetstone had been Michael’s political secretary, and she and David were firm political friends from their time together in the CRD. Had they not fallen out, it would most certainly be her, not me, running his campaign.

I move into David’s office and the leadership campaign begins. On my first day, there is only me and David, with George next door and Steve Hilton texting random thoughts. I feel pleased to still be working in Westminster but I have no idea what running a leadership election entails. Perhaps that’s why I have no premonition that it is about to take over my life – and not just for a summer, but for the next decade. I sit in blissful naivety, innocent of the looming storm.

— 2 —
‘COME WITH ME’

Most leadership campaigns are set up around an individual. An idea or two. And a few loyal friends. David’s was set up around building a new brand of Conservatism. He and a group of key allies have been busy crafting it for a while. So, I am initiated into this Sunday night group, to eat pizza and chart a new course for the party.

The Camerons’ home in west London is modern and chic, with black and white pictures of their glamorous wedding guests lining the walls. Sitting round the kitchen table are David, George, and a few other faces, some familiar. There’s the Diet Coke-swilling Daniel Finkelstein, who has finally given up on trying to be an MP after a few attempts in favour of a career in journalism. Danny hones his humour into a highly targeted weapon, waiting for lulls in the conversation to launch his witty one-liners. Oliver Letwin looks permanently confused by finding himself in politics at all – as if he has fallen unexpectedly out of a Tolstoy novel and is trying to find his way back as a matter of urgency. Then there is Steve Hilton, one of David’s closest friends – a radical blue-sky thinker cum March hare whose mood swings can confuse everyone, including himself. And sometimes we have Michael Gove, a courteous and brilliant Scottish journalist who is shyly considering a political career for himself. He always speaks like he is presenting a bouquet of the sweetest smelling flowers.

David is the natural head boy to George’s more bumptious, ‘rock the boat’ style. Both are clever and talented but in different ways. This partnership, which seems almost brotherly, is to remain at the heart of our operation: George, the creative intellectual, and David, the intuitive decision taker. Although their politics are not entirely aligned – David comes from more traditional conservative stock, whereas George embraces all that is modern, sophisticated, and liberal – they mostly see eye-to-eye. They are fiscal conservatives and passionate social liberals. And perhaps because I know them both well, I play my part in keeping them close, especially when we later come into government, when convention conspires to divide them.

These two men are the ‘creative intellectuals’ of Team Cameron. They are progressive Conservatives, whose beliefs are anchored in sound finance. The aim is to move the party back towards the centre ground that has for too long been occupied by Labour under Tony Blair. They call themselves ‘Modern Compassionate Conservatives’.

Alongside these ‘ideas’ people is a small but faithful band of MPs, many of them ex-Army: Hugo Swire, Hugh Robertson, Andrew Robathan, and Greg Barker, who are busy drumming up support for David amongst the parliamentary party. David’s old friend, and mine, Andrew Feldman, joins our operation as fundraiser-in-chief. His role is important not only for the campaign itself, but for showing that David has support from the wider Conservative family and the business community. Andrew takes to the task with the enthusiasm of a pit pony released into pasture.

Our select group meet in David’s Commons office most days. There are lots of ideas and lots of action points, but only me to do the action. (I find that most MPs prefer to ‘advise’ rather than ‘do’.)

I am swamped with work, at the centre of a tiny tornado. I am trying to manage David, manage the campaign, and organise a growing team. As the campaign builds momentum, we are inundated with offers of help. My phone doesn’t stop ringing. I set up a makeshift office in David’s rooms in Portcullis House, where I sit with my laptop balanced on my knees. Steve, now sitting beside me, sketches out a plan of articles and speeches for the weeks ahead. He calls this ‘the Grid’. We persuade George Eustice, a talented young press officer from Conservative Campaign Headquarters to join us. And now we are three. Between us, we are drafting articles, writing speeches, arranging media interviews, meeting with MPs, hunting for endorsements, and thinking about our strategy.

A LEADERSHIP CAMPAIGN IS like a mini general election. You need to stand for something. Be someone. Plot your interventions carefully, think about what you are saying, and how it will resonate in the media and beyond. To build up momentum you need endorsements from MPs, councillors, and other party grandees, as well as businessmen saying they would trust you with the country’s finances. Having a bit of money behind you helps as well. At the same time, you must not lose sight of who your electorate is. In a leadership election, this is first and foremost ‘the colleagues’, meaning the MPs. Beyond them are the party membership more generally.

There is a norm in politics that in order to win Tory leadership elections you need to tack right to pick up support in the party and then move towards the centre afterwards to appeal to the country. Early on, we reject this in favour of saying something about what we want to achieve. David boldly sets out his Conservative ‘modernising’ stall knowing that he will put off some of his colleagues but hoping the wider public will like what they see. If we can show that David Cameron is a ‘winner’, then the MPs might begin to take notice – especially those in marginal seats. It is a high-risk strategy.

Perhaps it was at this moment that David’s rather contractual relationship with his parliamentary party was forged. He never wooed them and in turn they never fell in love with him. But they recognised and respected him as someone who could lead them back into power. The consequence of this would be that when they thought he was not delivering, there was no love lost. Support melted away like ice cream on a summer’s day.

We march on. David gives a series of speeches, interviews, and articles, talking about the ills in society and the importance of social responsibility – issues which have been, until now, largely marginalised. He asks the party to think more about these problems and less about Europe. His focus does seem to resonate, bringing a breath of fresh air to a stale political environment. The papers like what they hear. People are listening.

Then we hit choppy waters. A two-week ‘trial by tabloid’ ensues over whether or not David took drugs in his youth. The story runs and runs, until we think we will never put it behind us. But then they finally peter out, and we’re at last able talk about something else.

Back on track, summer approaches and with it comes the ‘big beasts’, with Ken Clarke, Malcolm Rifkind, Liam Fox, and others joining the race, and suddenly David looks young and a bit out of his depth. There is a low moment when he is convinced he is going to fail. As we walk across the lobby of Portcullis House, David says to me, ‘At some point we need to discuss how I pull out, in a dignified way.’

‘Pull out of what?’ I ask, confused.

‘You know, admit defeat.’

‘But we’re going to win,’ I reply.

Over the next weeks, even I have to admit we are not winning – in fact, we are not gaining any ground at all. It is all DD versus Clarke and Fox, with DD remaining the firm favourite. And it is time to head off for our various family summer holidays. Struggling to find internet coverage in a friend’s villa in Spain, I take to standing on a chair to send emails in the hours when my children are resting. Steve and I prearrange times to speak, so he in turn can walk to the end of a field to get a signal. It is a relief when we all are back in London.

In early September, the tide shifts suddenly again, as it does so often in politics, and just for a moment we are given another chance. DD gives his formal leadership launch, surrounded by mostly white, mostly middle-aged men in what looks like a club room in the Commons. His speech is more select committee hearing than rousing oration. The whole things feels a bit out of date.

Although DD has a strong political foundation – son of a single mother, brought up on a council estate – he has no vision. He’s all backstory, no forward movement. We seem to have the opposite problem: David has so much he wants to do for his country, but his happy, privileged childhood is hard to build a political narrative around.

Steve and I meet to discuss our next move. We have run out of money. We decide to go ahead with a formal launch of David’s leadership bid anyway. Andrew Feldman rises to the occasion and finds the cash. Our launch is fresh and modern, and the audience is a far cry from a men’s club, as Samantha fills the room with young mothers, some of whom are breastfeeding. David’s speech captures the imagination. Suddenly he is the coming man again.

THE LAST WEEK OF September leading into party conference is pandemonium. I wake up on Friday relieved to think I have a day to play with, and then I remember David wants to meet at a tapas restaurant on Golborne Road he is fond of. He bills it as a ‘take stock’ lunch before we all head up to Blackpool. I am uncomfortably aware that time is ticking, plus I have promised to pick my daughter up from school and take her out for tea. We are only a third of the way down our checklist (speech, press, visits, ties …) when Danny Finkelstein drops by. I know what’s missing, he says. American-style mementos to hand out – bells and whistles. Great idea, everyone says, nodding away, only it’s clearly me who is going to have to magically conjure up these items at the eleventh hour. Right now, I wish Danny would just stop having great ideas, or any ideas at all.

We head up to Blackpool with ‘the mo’, as the Americans are fond of saying. But although we have the momentum, we have a long, long way to go. We have the backing of just fourteen MPs – the ‘early Cameroons’, as David later dubs them.

At conference, there is a growing sense of excitement around David. We are hounded by camera crews and enthusiastic supporters. Our team roams the halls wearing ‘I love DC’ T-shirts and handing out badges. DD has a group of women decked out in T-shirts saying ‘DD for me’; most of them are large-breasted, which hits a sexist note. Steve is too edgy to sleep. Rachel Whetstone (his future wife) has booked him in to the main conference hotel to help with Michael Howard’s valedictory speech. From his room, he pens a conference newsletter, ‘DC News’, which he prints from a mobile printer overnight. Our supporters put copies under people’s doors in the early hours of the morning. Broadcasters are clutching their sheets as they begin their morning rounds. There is a sense that we are fighting for it, and people – on the whole – like to be fought for, in a robust democracy.

However, by this point, the conference has morphed into a beauty parade. Expectation around the candidates’ speeches is growing. David and I sneak onto the balcony to watch DD. His speech feels flat and workmanlike to us. ‘Don’t smile,’ says David. ‘People are watching us.’

David is up shortly. We sit in the green room at the back, still feeling very much the outsiders. David has been practising his speech for days. A few minutes before he goes on, Steve, Samantha, and I are taken to our seats. I feel a bit sick. Steve is wriggling in his chair. I am amazed: Samantha is all pregnant calm.

‘Come with me,’ says this audacious one-term MP as he lays out his vision for the Conservative Party’s future of aspiration and social responsibility.

He electrifies the audience, not least the party grassroots, who are tired of being in opposition and served up a diet of thin political gruel. At this moment, they have no idea where this young man is heading exactly, but it’s clear they want to be going somewhere new. We just have to hope that – when it comes time to cast their vote for leader – they are in the mood to take a bit of a risk.

Tom Bradby declares on the ITV Evening News that David won the hall.

We leave Blackpool with the support of forty-two MPs and the resounding enthusiasm of party activists. It is interesting that this group, who are often parodied for their affection of the status quo, have so fully supported the candidate of change.

It remains a crowded field, however, and Ken Clarke, Liam Fox, and DD himself are still very much in the running. Yet, it feels as if we are now on our way. At the very least, we will have shifted the conversation in the party.

The official leadership election begins with a series of ballots amongst the MPs, who whittle the candidates down to two. The final choice from these two is put in the hands of the wider party membership. Michael Spicer, as head of the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers, adjudicates the rules of engagement as if supervising a duel.

Whilst it may be the case that no man is an island, it is soon evident to me that every MP is a planet, many in a rather unfamiliar orbit. Each potential leader is vying for their support, so this is the moment of maximum power for the backbench MP, and they exercise it to the full. In practice, this means hours of one-to-one meetings. They each arrive with a mysterious cocktail of asks, personal and political, some driven by ambition, others by friendships or dislikes, even revenge. They seem to want their leader to be of them but also above them. Most of all, they want to back a winner and then, down the line, to be promoted by them.

David does not find this bit easy. Many MPs are not sure about him. For some this is because they fear he is too centrist for their taste, but for others, it’s more personal. They think he has had a golden life – private money, a good-looking wife (who works!). His family is in London, while theirs live miles away. Some feel he has arrived in Parliament already the coming man, while they have struggled for recognition. And then there is the irritation that he does not always catch their eye when he passes them in the corridor. He does not mean to do this, but he does. This has given him a reputation amongst his colleagues of being a little aloof. I spend a lot of time with David talking about eye contact.

We also have to talk to him about his suits. We wean him off his double-breasted baggy jackets, which make him look a bit like a jolly farmer. A new, smart ‘David the candidate’ emerges, with single-breasted jackets and a firmer ‘look’. He is also beginning to acquire a certain homegrown charisma.

We are nervous going into the first ballot of MPs. David Davis remains the mainstream candidate, but Liam Fox seems to be gaining momentum on the right. It’s quite possible we may crash and burn in the middle. But David comes second in the first ballot of MPs, with fifty-six votes to DD’s sixty-two. And then he comes first in the second ballot, with a strong ninety MPs (and DD down to fifty-seven).

Wind in our sails, we move on to the next battle: convincing the party membership. The final ballot is fixed for 6 December. It is weeks of regional tours and hustings against DD. And it is not all plain sailing. DD knows how to press the buttons of the Tory heartland. But David Cameron seems to appeal to Middle England, possibly because he shares their values. (This is a man who would cook a full Sunday lunch to eat on his own.) And David is giving them hope.

In the middle of the leadership campaign, we hit a glitch. David, now the favourite to win, gets incredibly nervous ahead of a special Question Time debate. It is a surprise because until now he has been so natural on television. Relaxed and accessible, he usually impresses by actually trying to answer the audience’s questions. Yet this time he seizes up, his hand reaching up constantly to wipe away the sweat forming on his top lip. I find it hard to watch. This is the first time this happens to David but not the last. There is something in the intense pressure of these moments that can be too much to bear, especially once you have become the frontrunner.

The final hustings is in Exeter, and we return to Hugo Swire’s Devon home for a feast to celebrate his birthday. The meal comes courtesy of Hugo’s wife, Sasha Swire, who is an extraordinary cook and a sharp critic of all things political. Sasha has a camera, and – Snap – a picture is taken of Team Cameron, comprised at this moment of David, Hugo, Liz Sugg, Sophie Pym, James Cecil, and me, sitting on the sofa. We’ve had a couple of glasses of wine, and we’re relaxed, nearing the end of the campaign, with nothing much left to do but wait and see if we have convinced the party membership that this one-term MP should be their leader.

WE ARRIVE AT THE Royal Academy for the announcement of who will be the next leader of the Conservative Party. David is getting miked up when Michael Spicer comes in and whispers in his ear. He has won. When we have finished with the speeches and fanfare, we find Terry, Michael Howard’s former driver, waiting for us in the courtyard. David is the Leader of the Opposition now, and as such, he gets a car and driver.

‘Where do you want to go?’ Terry asks.

I look at David, the victory beginning to sink in, and wonder what we have got ourselves into. We had better go to Norman Shaw South – to Michael Howard’s old offices, tucked away at the far side of the parliamentary estate.

I wander through the abandoned rooms, looking out over the beautiful view of the Thames and the London Eye beyond. It has been a tough journey back to my old desk. Now I am to be deputy chief of staff to the Leader of the Opposition. We have persuaded Ed Llewellyn, another old colleague from the Conservative Research Department and former political advisor to Chris Patten and Paddy Ashdown, to return from Bosnia to be David’s chief of staff. Despite being only a few years older than me, Ed already has the air of an experienced public servant and brings a stamp of credibility and professionalism to the team. He is not one to throw his weight around (in any sense; he is a not a large man), having instead a quiet but firm authority and soft charm. Ed will sit in the desk opposite to me for the next eleven years. We are a team from day one.

I join David in his office. We have PMQs the next morning, and he needs to prepare.

— 3 —
THE CLUNKING FIST

We are, we realise, in a mess.

Gordon Brown is basking in a prolonged honeymoon, having replaced Tony Blair as prime minister a few months previously, whereas we have just gone through a series of disasters. There is talk of a snap election. Labour are ahead in the polls, so if this happens they are most likely to win. Things do not look promising. I feel we may be in danger of morphing into a one-party state, with Labour entrenched in power while we remain side-lined and in exile.

‘He was the future once,’ said a cocky David to Blair during their first PMQs exchange, to roars from the Tory benches. When Blair left the Commons for the last time and the Labour benches got to their feet, so too did David and George, gathering the rest behind them. Then Brown – the ‘clunking fist’ as Blair described him – arrived in No. 10 in 2007, and the polls surged to Labour.

Despite the hesitancy of some on the more traditional wing of the party, the Conservatives had been starting to look to be electable again under David’s leadership. But in light of Brown’s recent success in the polls, the chorus of discontent from parts of our own party is growing louder.

However, Brown lacks a mandate of his own from the electorate, and it makes sense for him to go to the country quickly while he looks strong and new. We fully expect an election announcement any minute.

In addition to our woes in light of the appeal of fresh-and-serious Brown (we still cannot believe this), our own party is in a bad mood with us. When David asked them to ‘Come with me’ to change first the party and then the country, he really meant it. But some have found the realities harder to bear. We are focused on social responsibility: fixing our ‘broken society’ and ‘hugging hoodies’ (as the press put it; David never actually says this). We also advocate doing our bit for the world’s poor and set about trying to get more women into Tory seats. None of these are traditional party issues, to put it mildly.

As we move the party towards the centre, it is not surprising that we annoy the ‘core’. Their aggravation grows with the daily drip, drip, drip of criticism from some of the Tory press. We’re still recovering from a row about grammar schools in May 2007, which brought things to boiling point. Since then, there have been demands to add more mentions of ‘tax cuts’ and ‘Europe’ to David’s repertoire.

We have continued to try to be fresh and modern, not just in what we have to say but in how we say it. At town hall meetings up and down the country, David likes to surprise people by answering their questions directly. We call these ‘Cameron Directs’. We video David and post them online. We call these ‘webCameron’. We have set up chances for David to work as a teacher in Hull and live with a Muslim family in Balsall Heath, Birmingham, a genuine effort to engage with people’s lives outside the SW1 bubble.

David is also the first leader of a major political party to embrace ‘green’ issues. He launches our local government campaign with the slogan ‘Vote Blue, Go Green’, and our first foreign trip was not to Washington but to the Arctic, to highlight climate change. It’s brave – and it’s brilliant politically, as it’s helping to remould the party, which has become stuck in a certain mindset, including with regards to the environment. It has been a conscious rebranding exercise in which Steve Hilton has played a crucial part.

Years later, Tom Bradby, then political editor of ITV News, tells me over lunch that he feels responsible for David’s political success on two accounts. One, because he called his speech at Blackpool in 2005. Tom was clear: David Davis flopped and David Cameron blew them away. Two, because he never reported what a ‘total dick’ David looked when he fell off his dog sled on our Arctic trip. We have been friends ever since.

Yet despite all our new ideas and thinking, the truth is that in opposition you only have the promise of change. You have no country to run, no real power. At most you have the power to influence. You are only as good as your last sound bite, at the mercy of events you largely have no control of, working against a machine of government that is much bigger and stronger than you. You have to be agile and make the most of opportunities as they arise. Government doesn’t like working on weekends, so you can make a speech on Saturday, and it will take them a week to agree a policy.

Our greatest challenge has been trying to keep momentum going, keeping the feeling alive that David encapsulates the potential for realising long-awaited change. We operate as a small, tightly knit group on permanent standby, 24/7. We must be able to react to a moving situation in real time.

So, it has been a busy time for all of us, but especially for David. For most of the pressure falls on the leader in opposition, because they are the only figure the public really knows. David has grown into the role. He is more focused, more assured, and more professional, and he looks more polished. And all this despite the fact that he is now a father of three, with the arrival of his second son on Valentine’s Day 2006.

‘You cannot call your child Elwen,’ says his bossy press secretary, Gabby Bertin. The boy is duly named Arthur, a good English name. But Arthur is quickly discarded at home and for evermore, in favour of Elwen.

Now that my own children are at school, working full-time seems more achievable. Even so, Project Cameron is less a job and more total immersion. Each of us is able to manage our family lives because David is careful to make time for his, but we are always on call. Always working, from the playground or the park. Can we try to keep the mewling and puking down, David asks, as we grapple with our young children on evening and weekend calls.

IN SUMMER 2007, WE have planned a trip to Rwanda and Pakistan. The African leg is to visit a new social project that is the brainchild of Shadow International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell. But then the rain starts to come down in buckets and the UK is covered in floods. Witney, David’s constituency, is hit especially badly. We argue amongst ourselves about whether or not David should go ahead with the trip. There is a team call to make a final decision over the weekend. I am in Devon perched on a sea wall, surrounded by water, so naturally I lean towards staying (though I am not scheduled to join them on this occasion). Others, like George Eustice, think pulling out looks panicky. We plough ahead with the trip. The result is disastrous: classic ‘leader abroad while Blighty sinks’ stuff. Then there is a power cut as David addresses the Rwandan parliament, which just about sums it all up.

George Eustice rings me regularly from the trip. ‘Things aren’t so bad,’ he says cheerily.

‘Well don’t be fooled,’ I say. ‘It’s a complete disaster back here.’

This begins a tradition, which stays with us throughout our time, of the ‘away team’ being out of sync with the ‘home team’ during foreign trips. The ‘away team’, utterly satisfied by their diet of red carpets and banquets, seems oblivious to the press coverage and always thinks the trip is going swimmingly. The ‘home team’ – which is normally me, as I try to avoid being away from my children too often – is surrounded by Daily Mail headlines that don’t make for happy reading. On the countless occasions, I try to explain this to David he says, ‘Don’t read the bloody Mail.’

The floods seem to symbolise a summer of falling polls and fading prospects. So, faced with mounting pressure from our own party and the prospect of an early election being called by a seemingly confident Brown, we start to prepare a lifesaving party conference and manifesto. Just in case.

Over the years, we will finesse our approach to party conference, building it around a strong, clear message and trying to deliver ten good announcements that fit with our big-picture narrative. It is a simple strategy: keep the predators from writing about things we don’t want them to, by giving them lots of things to write about that we do.

We need some nice, softer stories for this weekend’s interviews. A hospital visit for the Saturday. Something strong for The Andrew Marr Show.

Monday is George’s day, and he wants at least one story to brief into the morning papers as well as one for the conference hall. Tuesday is our weakest day, when things can blow off course. (In later years, it will become Boris day, and we will never have a clue what he is going to say, though we are pretty sure it will overshadow everything else.) Wednesday is David’s big speech.

We spend the week before conference in a manic series of policy meetings and speech prep while standing by on ‘election alert’. We reach Friday without Brown having called an election, to sighs of relief all around the office. We have a strong programme of policy announcements and a media plan ready to roll out. We are as ready as we are ever going to be.

Most secret of all is George’s plan to announce the abolition of inheritance tax for homes worth less than £1 million. We think this is the right thing to do, and it is also about time to throw a bit of red meat at our unhappy supporters who are tired of their menu of soya beans. This new policy is known only to David’s and George’s teams, and we trust each other completely.

Then I look up to see George’s chief of staff, Matt Hancock, approaching my desk. He has bad news: the entire conference policy package, which was due to be sent to him, has in fact been emailed by mistake to Mike Hancock, the Liberal Democrat MP whose email address is HancockM rather than Matt’s HancockMJ.

‘Fuck,’ says Andy Coulson, who has recently joined the team as the new head of communications and must now be wondering what he’s got himself into. It is what we are all thinking. We break the news to David. Over the years I learn that he always takes very bad and very good news in exactly the same way: with a calm acceptance of fate. There is a long discussion about whether we should phone this guy called Mike Hancock and beg him to be merciful. Some think a call might simply alert him to the email. We decide to leave it. We will know soon enough. After a week of waiting for an election to be called, we are now anxiously expecting the Lib Dems to reveal all our policies on the eve of the conference. We may as well pack up and go home. Which is precisely what we do. There is nothing to do but wait and hope.

By the time we arrive in Blackpool we are all nervous wrecks, watching the television anxiously. We discuss whether to bring forward any of the announcements, but decide against. It is heads down, let’s get on with the plan.

By Sunday night it’s clear there is a god – he is called Mike Hancock! – who clearly does not check his emails on a Friday afternoon. At least not on this occasion.

The week progresses as well as can be. I stand at the back of the hall with Ed to listen to George make his big announcement on inheritance tax. No one is expecting it, and there is a roar of approval from the audience. He looks so surprised and pleased with himself, we are worried he is going to burst out laughing. David joins him on the stage and pats him on the back. A gesture of pride in his friend and political ally, and also of relief. Something is going to plan.

After he won the leadership, many had urged David to move George and make way for a more experienced Shadow Chancellor, someone who might complement David’s own youth. But he did not. Instead, when the pressure mounted, he chose to appoint Ken Clarke as Shadow Business Secretary to add a bit of grey hair to the economy team. Right from the start, David embraced George as his political partner and equal.

As we approach the end of conference week, there is a growing excitement around David’s speech. This year, however, there is a twist. We’d been well into our twentieth draft when Steve had taken David aside and persuaded him he must make the speech from memory, his argument being that this was one of those moments when you need to stun the audience, and an ordinary scripted speech would not cut through. It started as their secret – David and Steve’s. Steve loves to do things secretly, which is ironic for someone who is so keen on transparency.

‘God, this is high-risk,’ said Ed, nervously, when we found out. ‘Just don’t mess up,’ George added, helpfully. Andy remained silent, probably wondering once more why he had joined this mad house.

At the Imperial, I watch David pace up and down his suite while he tries to memorise pages and pages of text.

Then Andy has a sort of ‘surrogate’ meltdown about Samantha’s outfit for the next day (he is actually anxious about David delivering his speech from memory). She is not yet in the habit of finding a ‘conference dress’. We show Andy the options, which, in his eyes, fall short. Always with an eye to the photos, he wants bright colours, and Samantha has chosen elegant black. He charges furiously down the hotel corridor and demands to see my wardrobe. I am about five inches shorter than her, but Andy is undeterred. Flicking through my dresses he turns and says: ‘That’s the one.’ And in that horrible moment I realise that he is referring to the dress I am wearing. A favourite, it is black and white with angels and hearts all over it. Apparently, I have no say in the matter. Dress duly handed over, Samantha takes to the stage, looking much better in it than me.

I wait with David in the wings for Liz Sugg to give the go-ahead. Soundtrack: The Killers. David walks onto the stage to deliver what we hope will be another career-altering speech. It is. A full fifty minutes without a single false note. He takes the conference patiently through his aspirations for the country and, hearing him addressing them so directly, his audience responds.

David leaves Blackpool with the goodwill of his party behind him. We are all so exhausted that we can hardly speak. But I am not so tired I cannot make it to my own birthday party, which my husband has arranged with my twin sister. The celebration soon evolves into a ‘We saved the day’ party, as, straight off the train from Blackpool, Team Cameron join us.

But we have not quite saved the day. The mood about us may be more positive, but there is still talk of Brown calling an early election. And everything depends on whether our conference has had any effect on the polls. Walking back from CCHQ with George and Oliver Letwin on the Friday morning after the conference, we hear rumours that the election is going ahead. We are full of despair. Oliver quickens his pace. He has a manifesto to write! It turns out to be a false alarm. A key poll comes through: we have drawn level with Labour.

In the end, Prime Minister Brown, who has waited over a decade for the crown, cannot bear to take the risk of losing it after just a few months. Gordon bottles it and we are back in business. We’ll have another chance to convince the country that we have something to say – that there is another way but Labour.

— 4 —
PLAN A

By the time we face the Tory faithful the following year, it is not our political future we are battling for, but the entire global financial system, which is in meltdown. On 15 September 2008, Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy, and there are rumours that the whole financial system is about to collapse. The US Congress is trying to vote through a rescue package, which it first rejects on 29 September – the eve of our party conference. Things feel extremely precarious. While Brown’s honeymoon period had looked to be well over, now he has been granted a second lease of life, heading off to New York to save the world while we sit in Birmingham looking like an irrelevance.

Ed Llewellyn, Andy Coulson, Matt Hancock, and I join George, David, and Samantha for our customary dinner to take stock on the eve of conference and prep David for his appearance on The Andrew Marr Show. We ponder our predicament over steak (for the boys) and Caesar salad (for Samantha and me) in David’s smart new suite, complete with a baby grand, on the twenty-first floor of the Birmingham Hyatt. After much discussion, we decide that David must address the developing financial situation at the conference the very next day. We abandon work on the main conference speech and get drafting.

David promises to work with the Labour government to ensure financial stability. George jumps on a train to London with Rupert Harrison, his economic advisor, to meet with Alistair Darling and as many other serious people as they can conjure up. The conference itself is subdued while the drama plays out elsewhere. And we are missing our usual brief moment in the sun.

Back in London, Brown continues to dominate the airwaves. ‘This is no time for a novice,’ he says pointedly. In the office, Oliver, who probably should have been a don, is giving us all seminars on economics: how to avoid a recession becoming a depression. I wipe the dust off my old economic textbooks, wishing I had listened more to my university tutors.

In early October, Brown announces a £500 billion bank bailout package, which comes on the heels of the Americans’ own package worth $700 billion. Labour’s answer to everything is to throw money at the problem. Their foot firmly on the gas, they seem unconcerned that the economy is heading off the cliff as our deficit spirals out of control, on its way to being the highest in our peacetime history. In late November, Labour launch a massive fiscal stimulus of £20 billion on top of the bank bailout.

Britain feels like it is hurtling towards economic catastrophe. And we are stuck, increasingly uncomfortable but unable to comment because, just over a year ago, we agreed to match Labour’s spending plans, a move we thought clever at the time, in order to neutralise an argument over public spending, just as Blair had done in 1997, but for opposing reasons. Our aim had been to stop Labour accusing us of being the party of cuts. Blair had been hoping to stop the Tories warning voters off a Labour spending binge.

We discuss our predicament for hours, and then decide. Enough is enough. We cannot go on like this. We oppose the stimulus. Now we have set out our own path. We will not spend our way out of the recession and risk a disastrous spiral of low or no growth, an ever-growing deficit and debt, and high interest rates, like those we’re witnessing in Greece. This is the end of our initial Team Cameron strategy and the start of ‘Plan A’.

We had begun with a political narrative largely focused on our broken society and social responsibility, only to find the landscape had radically changed. We were now grappling with a broken economy, which required a different focus. It would be this shift that created much of the disharmony in the team in the lead-up to the 2010 general election.

Steve Hilton – back from a year living with his wife, Rachel, in Palo Alto, California – is uncomfortable when he learns the economy is now taking centre stage in our messaging. It wasn’t that he had been totally off our radar whilst he was in California; when he first left, we tried to fix strategy meetings so he could Skype in. Most of us hadn’t yet heard of Skype, so the vision of Steve sipping his morning juice while wearing shorts and a T-shirt that appeared on the computer which we placed in the centre of our meeting table was a bit of a shock. We soon decided that Skyping Steve didn’t really work. We are worlds apart – literally.

Now Steve wants us to return to the emphasis on society that so dominated our earlier years. He’s worried that the messaging around the economy is too negative and that we must signal a sense of hope, not just of efficiency and sacrifice. David is sympathetic to his point of view, especially on the tone. But he is an intuitive leader and knows things have changed. We cannot ignore the central issue of the day: people are worried about their future and their jobs. Most of us feel that social policy must now take a back seat. Especially George and Andy.

Over the course of the past year, spent under the ever-expanding shadow of a mounting financial crisis, and with growing prospects for an election, there has been pressure on us to reveal more substance around our economic policies. George is very focused on the dilemma. Saying too little undermines our credibility; saying more is likely to scare the horses. In the end, George decides to lean into the ‘c’ word (‘cuts’), which we are all a little afraid of. And with good reason. After still more discussion, we decide again, and announce a programme of £23 billion of cuts, with the aim of eliminating the deficit over the lifetime of the next Parliament. Then George decides to go even further in his 2009 conference speech, promising immediate (‘in-year’) cuts if we win the 2010 election.

In his suite on the twelfth floor of the Midland Hotel, George gathers his team to comb through his speech line by line, as he always does, carefully placing policy announcements like bunnies into the hat ready for their ‘reveal’ the next day. He likes to entertain, does George, understanding that politics – amongst many things – is a show. But this year it is a deadly serious one.

I check in to see how things are going. They are hard at it – and hungry. The hotel, full to bursting, is late with room service. Poppy Mitchell-Rose, George’s right-hand woman – who is usually calm and smiley, a rock of support – looks anxious. I am due a feast from M&S courtesy of my old university friend Simone Finn, which we intend to eat together in front of Downton Abbey in my room. Always generous of spirit, she arrives with enough food for an entire army – or certainly the Shadow Treasury team. After a few mouthfuls of hummus, we repack the food guiltily and take it next door to share.

After David’s speech, we gather in a room at the back of the conference centre to celebrate and have some lunch. The week has gone as well as we could have hoped for. Both George’s and David’s speeches were well received. But it still all feels a bit risky.

We are now going into an election as the self-confessed ‘party of cuts’, giving Labour the opportunity to accuse us of undermining virtually every programme in government. We feel we need to be straight with the electorate, however. If we win, David will be handed the keys to Downing Street and expected to sort the mess out. Things will be difficult, so we need to have a mandate. We have little inkling just how defining these decisions are to be.

And then there is the wild rush for the train. Everyone is dying to get home. We charge across the station platform clutching our tickets like a rabble of unruly school children – only Steve has lost his. He rushes past the barrier anyway and is stopped by a policeman. Steve explains that he is with our party; he has a ticket but just can’t find it. The policeman won’t let him through. Steve has always had a problem with authority and I can see he is about to lose the plot. When the policeman tries to calm him down by touching him on the arm, Steve explodes. The next thing we know, Steve is being led away in handcuffs. Andy volunteers to go with him to help sort things out.

I find David and Samantha on the train. ‘By the way, Steve’s just been arrested,’ I tell them. Not exactly the headline we were looking for.

— 5 —
THE GIANT DUE DATE

All elections ultimately come down to the same questions: ‘Is it time for change?’ (essentially the argument of all challengers) vs. ‘Can you afford to change?’ (the central message of all incumbents). In 2010, we have to sell a message of change. So our first task is to explain, A change to what?

Ever since Brown bottled a general election in 2007, we have been on election footing, which looms like a giant due date. According to parliamentary rules, the last possible date that Brown can hold the general election is 3 June. There is no way out, only the certainty of sleepless nights and the prospect of success or failure lie ahead.

The first rule of planning a campaign is to decide what you are trying to say. What is your central message? This needs to be entrenched in your values. In politics, if you have no values, then you have no roots – you will sway in the wind and ultimately fail.

We know what we are about and, although sometimes we disagree with each other, we are mostly aligned. This is David’s brand of progressive Conservativism – socially liberal, fiscally conservative, tolerant, internationalist.

Strategy is drawn from your values and gives your direction of travel. From it comes your policies – or, in other words, spelling out the precise things you want to do – which are then revealed to the public through a series of announcements.

If you want people to know what you are doing and saying beyond the Westminster village, you need to get on television. The easiest way to do this is with a speech, visit, or TV interview – and preferably all three. A good, strong picture of your boss on the evening news hammering home your message is basically ‘bingo’. But bingo is not as easy as it sounds. Think of all the times you have seen a politician standing in a faded room behind a podium looking dull and sounding duller and you have gone to bed not remembering a thing he or she said.

What is required to deliver bingo is careful planning. First, an announcement that encapsulates the overall message and is bullet-proof – or, in other words, a message that stands up under scrutiny. Then you also want a picture that reinforces that message, say, David smiling with school children, visiting a hospital or standing in front of a tank. All the better if this can occur on a day which does not become hijacked by a completely different story emerging from left field.

Out on the road with a pack of journalists, you are at the mercy of the weather – literal, metaphysical, and political – not to mention the hazards inherent in being ‘on tour’. The road is navigated by the ops team, ours run by the legendary and fiercely loyal Liz Sugg. Their duty is to deliver the candidate, ideally with dignity intact, to their next appearance, and the appearance after that. Missed trains, cancelled helicopters, broken-down cars, and harassment from angry members of the public are pretty commonplace delays. In our case, this list soon includes angry chickens (sent by the Mirror) and butlers carrying silver platters.

It is our job, as the core team, to pull the various strands together. The strategy, the policies, the comms plan, the ops schedule. Write the manifesto. Decide what David is going to do and say each day, and for what purpose.

This won’t be my first general election campaign by any means. That was Major in 1997, when my role was to write rebuttals to news stories about Europe at 5 a.m., ahead of the daily press conference. Next, driving around the beautiful Cotswold villages, pregnant with my second child, I helped David win his Witney seat for the first time in the summer of 2001. By 2005 I was back in CCHQ supporting Michael Howard. But I have never been at the heart of a campaign.

This is new.

WE GO INTO FULL election-planning mode before Christmas 2009. Every Sunday night, David, George, Steve, Ed, Andy, and I sit in David’s study in North Kensington, with its sharp ochre velvet chairs and reindeer carpets moulting onto our clothes, working through the detailed plans for the week ahead and discussing strategy. We complement each other as a group and like each other a lot as people. And although we dive into all of the elements of strategy, policy, planning, and comms, each of us know what particular ‘value’ it is we bring. Steve is the blue-sky thinker, Andy is the comms whiz. George is the strategist, propelling us forward with new ideas and challenging us. Ed and I keep everything moving in tandem. And David is the decision taker, and our leader.

We are not without our differences. Steve’s liberal, radical conservatism doesn’t always gel with Andy’s more traditional variant. Andy comes to politics from the sharp end. He deliberates like a tabloid editor: What would his readers think? He is not keen on lofty ideas dreamt up in Westminster. He worked as a journalist since leaving school and rose under the Murdochs as one of their golden children. When later we decide to include Michael Gove, whose brilliant, creative political mind we hope will add to the proceedings, the meetings begin to appear in The Spectator, which is unfortunate.

The aim is to start the year with a bang. Articles are being written, videos recorded, and – despite some opposition – a poster campaign is in preparation. George is especially keen on this, as he believes posters speak of confidence. If done right, a poster presents a memorable image that conveys a message clearly and succinctly to the electorate.

However, no one can agree what the images should be, and we are running out of time. We cover the office floor with drafts, burning through image after image. Of course, everyone has their own pet idea – even though we have been told categorically not to try to be amateur creatives ourselves and leave this to the professionals, it’s too irresistible. Even my dad is emailing ideas.

David heads down to his home in Dean, in Oxfordshire, for the beginning of his winter break. Realising we still have a lot to sort, he calls us down to the country for a meeting. It is a few days before Christmas and the weather has changed for the worse. I wake up to see inches of snow outside my window in London. I ring our ops genius, Liz, and suggest we move the meeting to Oxford. This is an easy place for those of us in London to get to and it’s only forty minutes from David’s constituency home. But David is resolute. He will cook us lunch in Dean.

I set off with George in Andy’s rather flash three-door convertible. We speed down the motorway talking ten to the dozen and before we know it we have passed Oxford into the Cotswolds, which is covered by mountains of snow. Just after the turn off to Dean there is a steep hill. Andy slows down, carefully steering away from what looks like ice at the side of the road. But halfway down we seem to be in a slide. ‘Watch out!’ shouts George, and before we know it, we have crashed over a wall and into a tree.

There is silence in the car while we take in the situation and establish that no one has been hurt. ‘Fuckin’ hell!’ screams Andy, jumping out to check if his pride and joy has sustained any damage. The situation seems to be: Cotswold wall, 2–Andy’s car, 0.

I call David. ‘Um, hi … Just to say we’ve crashed.’ David doesn’t believe me at first, thinking it is a joke to make him feel bad about dragging us down to Dean. ‘No, we really have.’

David appears minutes later in a four-wheel drive and thick winter boots to help. We stand at the top of the hill, redirecting other members of the team away from the ice to avoid a Cameroon pile-up.

Despite Andy’s preoccupation with his car, we manage to get a lot done. The discussions revolve around the ‘air’ war – which means how we communicate what we propose to do once we’re in government, through speeches, interviews, and visits – and the ‘ground’ war, which is about the party’s operation – knocking on doors, telephone canvassing, handing out leaflets, finding out where our vote is, and, ultimately, on polling day, getting people out to vote. Finally, over a cup of tea, we return to the poster and give the go-ahead to an image of David looking reassuring with the caption: ‘We can’t go on like this. I’ll cut the deficit not the NHS.’

The poster is launched with great fanfare but falls flat. Seeing it on the motorway a few weeks later, I can see the problem straight away. David looks smug and spruced up rather than how we wanted him to look – fresh and trustworthy. We then discover the ad agency has airbrushed the picture. When word of this gets out, we are caught in a frenzy of press criticism. David is accused of being a PR man and a vacuous show pony. This is not how we had wanted to start the year.

THE ARGUMENT ABOUT WHETHER to lead on the economy or social issues remains unresolved. But we must progress with the manifesto.

A manifesto is a tricky thing to get right. It needs to be substantial enough to set out a path for government, but not so long it bores everyone to death. It should say something about what you really plan to do for the country – setting out your direction of travel and main policy offer. It needs to include some big-ticket items, but it also needs to cover all of the main areas, so that no one can accuse you of not caring about their pet subject. Most importantly, the manifesto should aim to appeal to voters – which is not as obvious a point as you may think.

Your manifesto is critical because it’s your mandate for government. And if you are lucky enough to win an election, it will stay with you as a blueprint for your first Queen’s speech, and the one after that, and after that one too. If you have a group of MPs in your party who do not like you, they will be hard-pressed to vote against something that is in this document, because people have voted for them on the basis of it. So, it is worth all the hard work, in the end.

Oliver Letwin oversees our manifesto process, which is a painstaking and at times painful task. It’s really hard to successfully include the wider party in the process while avoiding a free-for-all. The series of policy groups Oliver sets up are popular – in that they are deemed ‘inclusive’ – but ultimately lead to pandemonium. Some of the less desirable policy recommendations leak into the pages of the tabloids. Members become increasingly disenchanted as their proposals are rejected left, right, and centre. All in all, this year’s exercise cannot be deemed a success.

And yet slowly and surely, the manifesto comes together, including a commitment to cut the deficit, boost business, and reform schools and welfare, as well as an ambition to be the greenest government ever. We launch it in Battersea Power Station, hoping the iconic backdrop will speak to reconstruction and a ‘can do’ attitude. The Shadow Cabinet is there in full force. Samantha is there too, heavily pregnant with Florence.

I hold my copy of the manifesto, ‘An Invitation to Join the Government’, and listen to David’s speech. It has been written by Steve and is all about ‘Big Society’ – encouraging people to get involved in their communities. In reality it confuses just about everyone.

IT IS AN EARLY Easter in 2010. I roam round the garden of my sister’s house in the country, hiding eggs ahead of the traditional hunt. I feel strangely detached, like I am simply going through the motions of family life. I know that in just a few hours, this normality will be suspended for a while. On Tuesday, Gordon Brown will go to Buckingham Palace to ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament, and thereby officially fire the starting gun. We will then move onto full election footing, with its gruelling schedule of early morning starts, long days, and late nights.

We have already left our offices in Norman Shaw to join the rest of the party team in CCHQ at Millbank, where we are packed into the open-plan office like sardines. The place smells of takeaway pizza and unshowered bodies. I feel excited and a bit apprehensive. We have been anticipating this moment for years, and now that it has come, win or lose, the end of our years in opposition is in sight.

My last night with the family will be Sunday night. From Monday, the core team will decamp to a hotel in London for the duration of the campaign, so that we will able to conduct our punishing schedule with no distractions from family or friends (although on weekends we will be allowed home). It is a terrible wrench to part from my children, but I know I would be up too early and back too late to see them anyway.

This is a long-standing but rather hushed-up election tradition. Michael Howard and his team stayed at the luxurious Mandarin Oriental in Knightsbridge for the 2005 campaign. We know anything like that is completely out of the question now. How can you fight an election on austerity from the Mandarin Oriental? Andrew Feldman books us in to the Park Plaza, a monolithic building of darkness that dominates the roundabout across Westminster Bridge. The place is a labyrinth of orange carpets, dark hallways, and tiny rooms, many of which face onto an internal well seemingly designed to house the entire pigeon population of London. I discover this depressing view of the pigeon sanctuary is not something I share with my more illustrious colleagues, who have palatial, river-facing rooms. They seem more positive about the hotel, strangely enough. I cannot get away from the sensation that someone has died somewhere along my corridor.

We are used to working together as a tightly-knit team, but you can’t run an election campaign by committee, especially if the members don’t always agree. And David cannot lead the campaign himself: he’s our front man. So, the idea is that George does it, though in reality he was never going to manage the day-to-day work. We need him out campaigning too. So, there is a gap – a large gap. We will learn our lesson and fill this in 2015 with Lynton Crosby. But in 2010 we go ahead with Andy and Steve as co-managers. Despite their differences in style and politics, they put themselves in a small office in the centre of CCHQ in a show of joint decision-taking. It is less an office and more a ‘pod’, really, which quickly earns it the ironic nickname ‘the love pod’. It is from this loveless pod that our 2010 election campaign is orchestrated. There is neither window, nor air, nor anything healthy at all in the pod – just two very tired men surviving on adrenaline.

Soon the routine is set. The media team gather at 5.30 a.m., ahead of the 6 a.m. broadcasts. My first meeting of the day with key members of the team – David, George, Steve, Andy and Ed – is at 6.30 at CCHQ. Also joining us are Liz, Stephen Gilbert, who oversees the campaign on the ground, and Rupert Harrison, who has taken over from Matt Hancock as George’s chief of staff now that Matt is himself standing for Parliament. We go through the main points, which have emerged from earlier meetings: which story we want to fly, which story we want to kill, what Labour are up to.

By 8 a.m. at the latest we set off on the campaign trail. Most days we try to get back to London for the evening, so we can discuss the day’s events and the state of play over dinner in the hotel and watch the news. Occasionally, we stay out on the road and spend the night in a hotel.

Each day involves a series of visits to target seats, with a speech and interviews planned at each stop. Getting to them requires one form of transport or another, sometimes of the winged variety. We have a plane in the 2010 and 2015 election campaigns, which David calls ‘Con Air’. The team and I sit up at the front with David. Sometimes journalists are at the back, filing their stories as we go, but mostly the press is taken round the country on a large bus.

The election bus is home to teams from each of the main national broadcasters: BBC, ITV, and Sky, as well as a representative from the Press Association and sometimes Bloomberg. A random selection of journalists from other outlets are out on the road with us for each day too. This needs careful handling by our press and ops teams. You are dealing with the most high-maintenance, low-pain-threshold, easily bored, unsympathetic, and ever hungry group of people in the world. There’s a lot of ringing their mate on the Labour bus to compare who’s getting the best pictures and, god forbid, better food. The scary thing is that your fate is largely in these people’s hands. How they interpret your day will be how the public sees it. It feels a lot like a one-way relationship: all give from us, all take from them. But ultimately, we have something they need – access to the campaign – and they have something we need – press attention.

When David and I join the bus, we sit in a private part at the back. A black leather seat forms a semicircle, and all the windows in this part of the bus are tinted. I assume it is designed for the use of a boy band on tour. Only instead of being thrown beers and girls, we get the occasional journalist sent back to do the daily interview. We spend hours at a time in the back of the bus, being jolted around, the British countryside speeding by, driven from event to event and stopping at market towns, factories, supermarkets, and new-build housing developments, our progress tracked by twenty-four-hour news. Mornings and lunchtime, Liz throws some food at us, usually of a healthy nature. By late afternoon we are at the chocolate and crisps.

Being out on the road is a risky business at the best of times, and even more so during an election campaign, when the potential for a high-profile disaster is high. A member of the public harassing a politician live on television can define an entire election campaign. Remember a furious Sharon Storer confronting Blair outside a Birmingham hospital in 2001 for failing to give enough support to the NHS? Only worse is the appearance of a member of the public being prevented from harassing a politician – or the politician complaining about it afterwards.

The considered view is that a politician is fair game and should take criticism on the chin. Fortunately, we have already learnt this lesson the hard way. In summer 2008, David did a series of interviews in Newlyn, Cornwall. In the middle of a question a man approached him, gesticulating. ‘Be quiet, we’re doing an interview’, pleaded Gabby Bertin, David’s press secretary, who is a half French, half Croydon girl, and takes no prisoners with her notepad and bright lipstick. The man began yelling even louder. The cameras swivelled round to take in the angry man. ‘I won’t be silenced,’ he yelled. ‘Effing Tory!’ David walked towards the man and shook his hand. ‘Tell me what the problem is, sir,’ he said, calmly. And the man began to regale him with accounts of his inadequate local Tory MP, live on national television.

Even without the gaffes, there is simply the hard graft of travel, which takes its toll – not just the trains, planes, and automobiles themselves, but the difficulty in getting your work done on them. Answering emails, reading your briefs, and making your calls is not easy as the car swerves in and out of the fast lane following the convoy.

Somehow I seem to attract more than my fair share of fiascos on the road, like losing my shoe under an intercity train. I have chosen a well-worn, comfortable pair for the day, but they come loose when I walk, so much so that my right shoe flies off my foot and lands in the gap between the platform and the train. Perched on one leg, I peer down the crack to see it nestled between the rails. I notice at this point that David has moved quite some way up the platform. ‘No, I don’t wish the train to be delayed while the guard fishes it out, thank you very much,’ I say. A delayed train (and lots of angry passengers blaming David) is a far worse fate than a single-shoed aide. After this incident, I never leave home without an extra pair of flats in my handbag.

There are other, more serious encounters. Helicopters seem to be a major culprit. They are beguiling creatures: they can land anywhere and halve your travel time. But they are also extremely dangerous. Returning from a visit, the pilot tells us the wheels are stuck and we cannot land. This, he says, is not really a problem but we cannot go to the heliport at Battersea. We head off instead to Biggin Hill Airport. There is a small runway there. As we approach, we spot a fire engine and ambulance on standby. This is not reassuring. The pilot brings the helicopter down to hover near (but not too near) to the ground. All we have to do is jump out, he explains. There is another pilot waiting to catch us. David makes a respectable exit. Gabby and I – all summer dresses, no tights, and bags galore – fare less well. Our poor pilot now has to fly around to get rid of the fuel before attempting an emergency landing. The firemen hand him a helmet and get the hoses ready. We are told the helicopter will flip round on landing. Thankfully, he manages it.

On another visit, we are due to land in a field. We are nearing the ground when suddenly the pilot pulls back and up at great speed. Hovering above the field, the pilot hammers on the window, shouting at the people down below, though of course they cannot hear. The sight of the hysterical pilot has reduced me to a nervous wreck. I am of little use, busy saying my Hail Marys, so David takes charge. He puts on his earphones and asks the pilot what is the matter. The pilot explains that he had to abort the landing because the farmer has put down a carpet in the field so that David will not get wet feet when he gets out of the helicopter – only the carpet flew up and very nearly got tangled in the propellers. We have barely avoided a blow-up. ‘Wait a moment,’ says David who then rings the team on the ground. The carpet is removed, and we land safely.

— 6 —
THE WORM

Grappling with the challenges of the campaign trail is par for the course in a general election. However, the run-up to the 2010 election featured something totally new, at least to us in Britain. It was the first to import the American tradition of the presidential TV debate. The drumbeat calling for a live head-to-head had been going for some time. It was hard to ignore. No one wants to say they won’t face their public. Even if privately we’re wishing the other side would back out, publicly we are saying, ‘Bring it on.’

So, we know a TV debate is coming, but the question is – in what form? The broadcasters think this is up to them to decide; we think otherwise. Which is why we start meeting in secret with Peter Mandelson, to work out what is in both our best interests. I am perhaps overly excited by the covert nature of the operation, involving the infamous Mandelson. Andy tells me to calm down. We creep in the back door of some office block to find Mandy and his team waiting for us. He begins, ‘The broadcasters may think they can tell us what to do …’

In the end, it’s decided that there will be three debates with the three party leaders – Gordon Brown, Nick Clegg, and David Cameron – over three weeks in the final weeks of the campaign. In theory, the first debate will concentrate on domestic affairs, the second on foreign affairs, and the third on the economy, but in practice they will be wide-ranging.

Had we known how much the debates were going to detract from the traditional style of campaign, we might have thought twice before agreeing. Because in 2010, the debates cut a huge hole out of the centre of the short campaign. Where old-style campaigns had been constructed around a daily message deployed at the morning press conference, these new debates made it all about one man’s performance on a weekly show: potential prime ministers, meet The X Factor. The first half of the week was taken up with the rev up, the second half with the come down. A once-steady poll lead could go into freefall based on a single night’s performance; all the years of effort put into building the trust and support of a nation could be lost in a moment. Plus, all the weight of the campaign came to rest on David’s shoulders. This, we quickly realised, was the curse of reality TV.

We set aside time for rehearsals but it isn’t nearly enough. We should have doubled it. At least we had the sense to know we lacked the expertise amongst ourselves to prepare for the debates. We reach across the Atlantic for help from people who do, and are lucky enough to find Bill Knapp and Anita Dunn, who had helped Obama into office in 2008. With their guidance, we get to work.

We start by preparing for what we think of as a slightly more complex – and longer – version of PMQs. Which it is, in a way, but a lot more complicated. It is like deploying an army over a vast landscape. Above all, there is the overall strategy for the battle ahead. The first step is to identify key topics – the ones you know will come up. Because the broadcasters only have time for a few questions, it is not so difficult to work these out.

We imagine the first debate, on domestic affairs, is likely to cover welfare, health, immigration, and maybe education. So, we pick one area, health, to start with. We work out what our strongest points are – the positive story that David has to tell. Next, we address our vulnerabilities – and this needs to be a very honest appraisal, the Americans tell us. What are the most difficult questions that could come up on this topic? What are the best answers? After that, we dig up everything the other side have said about health. What are their strengths and weaknesses? We are building trenches, from which David can mount an offensive but also retreat to safety.

However, while all this is good groundwork, it’s not what wins you the debate. Your key message is the thing you want the ‘folks’ back at home to remember. (We don’t have ‘folks’ in Britain, we tell our American friends. You do now, they say.) To land the key messages you need some good strong lines, which Bill Knapp calls ‘the zingers’. A zinger should speak to your point with absolute clarity. It should be short and focused. Think tweet rather than prose. ‘Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy’ goes down in history as the ultimate debate put-down. In those words, Democratic senator Lloyd Bentsen showed Republican senator Dan Quayle (who had dared invoke President Kennedy) to be arrogant, naive, inexperienced, and out of his depth, having made a bad judgement call in trying to identify himself with Kennedy in the first place. Opponent crushed. Enemy in retreat. That’s a zinger. (Even if George H. W. Bush still went on to win the actual presidential election.)

BUT WHAT HAPPENS IF you don’t get the chance to deploy your zinger because no one has asked you the right question, we ask? Not a problem, says Bill. This is when he teaches us some fancy debate footwork called ‘the pivot’. You pivot from your answer on subject A (undesirable topic) onto subject B (desirable one), and then glide into your zinger.

David has to practise his moves. Offensive hit, defensive back down in the trench, then pivot, glide, and zinger.

Once we have prepared the scripts, Bill and Anita say it’s time to turn to the show itself. They insist that David rehearse properly – meaning a real, live practice, with people playing the parts of the other party leaders.

We gather for the rehearsal in the press conference room. Michael Gove is acting as compere. He bowls a few questions. A few answers in, it becomes apparent that Jeremy Hunt (aka Nick Clegg) is hogging the limelight and getting on our nerves. We can’t make up our minds whether it’s Jeremy being annoying per se, or Jeremy doing a superb job of being Nick. We need a Nick strategy, say Bill and Anita.

Until now we have had a Lib Dem strategy – which is to ignore Nick and ‘love bomb’ his supporters. We spend some time discussing what to do – but again, not enough. We really just want Jeremy Hunt to stop talking so we can focus on our main opponent, which is Gordon Brown.

We don’t spot the fact that the real problem is Nick. He is about to launch himself as the change candidate.

THE FIRST DEBATE IS in Manchester. By the time we arrive at Granada Studios, the place is heaving ahead of the big fight. The city is divided by colours – reds, blues, yellows. The candidates are clipped on the lunchtime news. Clegg looks the most relaxed and says he has gone for a long walk to clear his head.

That afternoon we look round the set. It is always good to see it in advance. The stage is all laid out: three podiums, with one extra for the compere, the audience seats stretched in a semicircle around it. Though it looks huge on television, it is a tiny set. The reality of the evening’s show hits home. We talk lights and camera positions. David is getting nervous.

Back at the hotel, David takes a nap and I join the rest of the team. George has arrived. He’s not here just to support David; he is also our chief ‘spinner’ for the night, representing David’s performance to the press. He will call the debate a win for David, whether it is or not.

My son calls. He has been away for a week in Venice visiting his grandfather. I miss him terribly. There has been a last-minute change of plans – he is to fly home on his own. He is only 8 and I am uneasy. My father-in-law gets on the phone to reassure me. Guy’s bag is all packed and he is dying to see his mum. He’s very excited about the flight; it is a big adventure. Then Guy’s small voice is back on the phone. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Mummy.’

I rejoin the team hovering by the TV. There is a story about a volcano erupting. I watch the dust emerging from its angry mouth. Liz comes in to tell us we can’t use the helicopter, or Con Air, to get back on the road tomorrow. In fact, all flights are grounded because of the volcano. It takes me a few minutes to put the two things together: the dust cloud and my son’s flight home. I try to put it out of my mind. It is bound to be fine by tomorrow.

We leave in a chaos of cars. David is with Samantha; I am with the rest of the team. There are protestors outside the studio and cameras everywhere. Journalists shout at us as we drive past. Our group divides. We are all given special wristbands that determine where we are allowed to go. Andy and George are directed to a special ‘spin room’ where others, including Theresa May, will talk to the press after the debate. Samantha and Ed head to the Cameron green room – a tiny back office set up with a large TV.

I go with David to make-up. We have to wait our turn; the Prime Minister is ahead of us, we are told. Minutes later, Gordon Brown emerges looking wild and covered in white powder. ‘HELLO, DAVID!’ he barks. (He speaks in capitals. He is not usually interactive in conversation, preferring statements to dialogue.)

‘Whatever you do, don’t let the make-up woman put all that powder on you,’ I say to David once he has passed us.

After make-up, David is led off by the production team. I feel sick to my stomach. I find Samantha and the others in our ‘green room’ broom cupboard. We have only Fanta and peanuts for sustenance. I make a mental note to remember to bring some wine next time.

The debate begins shortly after 8 p.m. It quickly devolves into a slow-motion, live TV torture of David Cameron. He is answering the questions well enough but lacking the warmth that normally comes naturally to him. He is clearly nervous – we all are – and doesn’t look into the camera. I am glad he cannot see the line at the bottom of the TV screen representing what a group of undecided voters are thinking of the answers in real time. They indicate this using hand-held dials, creating this worrying infectious line, which is called ‘the worm’. The worm does not seem to have taken to David Cameron. It doesn’t seem to like Gordon Brown very much either. But the worm likes Nick Clegg – a lot. Fresh-faced Nick is coming across as Mr Honest and Reasonable Nice Guy. The antipolitics person. He is looking straight down the barrel of the camera as he answers each question – straight at the ‘folks’ at home.

Nick is winning this, Samantha says every two seconds. It’s fine, I reply, David is doing really well. But I know she is right. After the gruelling hour is up, David returns and sinks into a chair. We head back to his suite at the hotel and open a bottle of wine. The general agreement is that it was not David’s best performance, but it was adequate. Gordon was much worse. So what? One down, two to go. He will do better in the next debate.

Half an hour or so later, George and Andy reappear, exhausted from their copious spinning. They have done their best, but it has not been as easy to sell as a win. ‘Give me the hard stuff,’ Andy says, reaching for the spirits. George has been picked on by his old bête noire, Peter Mandelson. His briefing to a gathering of journalists was interrupted. ‘Look who’s over there,’ George imitates Mandy. ‘It’s my little friend Georgie – poor Georgie … spinning his little web, but he has nothing to spin with, ’cos his old pal Dave didn’t do very well.’

The next morning, we awake to a wall of failure streaming from every orifice of the media. Nick is the hero of the day – the man the nation has been waiting for. David is yesterday’s man. No one cares about Brown anymore. A lightning poll puts the Lib Dems ahead. Suddenly Nick stands as a potential prime minister. The political landscape has been completely altered. We are no longer sure what sort of election we are fighting. Is it against Labour and Gordon, or against Nick and the Lib Dems? We seem to be neither the incumbent nor the change candidate – and we’re heading fast, too fast, into political oblivion.

An exhausted and disheartened David heads down to Dean for the weekend with Samantha. The rest of the team regroup in London. Bill Knapp is still here, unable to fly back to the States, courtesy of that volcanic dust cloud. Andrew Feldman takes him home for Friday night Shabbat. My son is still stuck in Italy, thanks to the same cloud.

I speak to him every day, his voice getting quieter and quieter. ‘When will the volcano stop?’ he asks.

IT FEELS LIKE ONLY a second has gone by and the next debate, like the dust cloud, is looming ominously. I can feel the pressure mounting on David. This debate is being filmed in Bristol, and we have set aside a night and a morning for prep in Exeter. We all agree we should not fixate on Nick too much. We simply need David to relax and be more himself – to think about what he is trying to say. Look down the barrel of the camera, David repeats again and again. ‘To the folks at home,’ he adds, to reassure Bill.

The carnival arrives in Bristol. The normally cosy and calm West Country city is throbbing with camera crews and journalists. We find what looks like a quiet café and sit down to have a cup of tea. Within seconds a cameraman appears out of nowhere and starts filming us. More and more emerge from the back of the café like wasps. We sip our tea live on TV.

Back at the studio, Liz hands out the wristbands again and we head off to our different posts. David gets off to a good start. He is more relaxed and remembers to look directly into the camera lens. Nick sticks with his fresh-faced routine. Anyone who is tired of old politics, I’m your man, he is arguing, and almost everyone is tired of politics. Gordon is Gordon. The worm wavers between Nick and David. It is a draw.

The weekend polls are all over the place. We are not losing the election, but neither are we winning it. We have one more debate and then just over a week of campaigning left.

The dust cloud continues to hover, grounding planes everywhere. The summer term is about to begin but half of my son’s class are still stuck in a foreign destination unable to get home. The school’s website is offering car shares from the far corners of Europe. One friend rings me from a luxury resort halfway round the world. ‘I’m dying here in paradise,’ she says. I half feel sorry for her, then think better of it. My son is still in Venice, and he’s stopped coming to the phone. Something must be done.

A few days later, my son, accompanied by his noble grandfather, sets off on the long journey home by train. They carry food, books, and a deck of cards – anything they can think of to amuse themselves. My husband fights his way onto a ferry, rents a car, then drives to Paris, where the three generations are reunited over steak-frites. The weekend before the third debate, my son is finally home.

I talk to David about how he wants to approach the preparations. He is tired of rehearsing and wants some space. Too many people, too many points of view. He needs time to collect himself.

I phone my friend, the highly respected comms coach Anthony Gordon Lennox, who helped us in the early days of the leadership election. He has an extraordinary ability to bring out the natural strength and confidence in people, shutting out the external noise so that the person is able to concentrate on what they are trying to say. I ask him to come and have a quiet session with just David and me.

We will not rehearse ahead of the final debate.

THIS TIME WE ARE in Birmingham. The lead-up has been totally overshadowed by Gordon Brown being caught ranting in his car about a woman called Gillian Duffy whom he has called ‘bigoted’, unaware that he was still wearing his microphone from a previous interview. The clip is played nonstop on all the media outlets. Gordon has blamed the gaffe on Sue Nye, his long-time aide. It feels like a career-ending moment.

David has been mimicking Brown all day – ‘How could you let this happen, Sue?!’ – and telling Liz and me how lucky we are to have such an easy-going boss. We don’t engage. Later in the day, Brown is photographed, head in hands, as he is forced to listen to the clip live on Radio 2. I actually cannot bear to watch the footage. It seems almost cruel – Brown, the wounded animal being hunted by the pack.

Backstage at the debate, I experience a sudden desire to leave, to head back to the hotel and sleep through the whole thing. I can’t face the tension of the worm. But I stay. After a few minutes or so, David gets into his stride. The audience is warming to him and he is visibly relaxing. Some of the freshness around Nick seems to have worn off. Gordon is looking out to space, presumably in the hope that someone will come and take him away to a less hostile environment.

The worm is with David. It is a win. We collapse back at the suite, for once enjoying the post-debate commentary on the television. A mass of pizzas arrive that no one will admit to ordering, but it doesn’t stop them being eaten. It is late when we finally get some sleep. There is one week left until polling day.

In the short time left, Labour mount a massive attack against our economic policy. It is all about ‘Tory cuts’, and bit by bit, we see our poll lead nibbled away. In the end, Nick’s huge success during the debates is not borne out in the final poll. He loses ground: his breakthrough was just a blip – testimony to the fact that the ‘X Factor’ can put people on a pedestal, and then bring them down to earth again, even more quickly.

So, did the debates make a difference to the election? Not to the Lib Dems. And to us? We lost ground and then recovered it. But David has a different take: without the distraction of the TV debates, he thinks Labour’s campaign might have gained more ground. After all, we had bravely gone into the general election being honest about our plans for austerity, and we might well have paid a price for it at the ballot box.

— 7 —
THE ELECTION BUS

It was George’s idea for us to do the all-nighter into polling day. (Notably, though, ‘for us’ did not include him.) Coverage of our election bus stopping every hour or so during the night would be new to British politics. Hopefully, it would show real energy and our will to win.

I pack a small bag for the trip and then repack, choosing a slightly bigger bag that will fit a pillow. The plan is for me to meet up with the team who are already in Scotland, where we will begin our descent, zigzagging the length and breadth of the nation. We are all in good spirits when we stop off at a local chippy in Longtown, near Carlisle, to get supper. An hour or so later we stop to meet some firemen, and a few hours after that, to visit a smelting factory.

Towards midnight we try to get a bit of sleep in the back of the bus, and I sneak my pillow out of the bag hoping David won’t notice. ‘I can’t believe you’ve actually brought a pillow,’ he says, beady-eyed, before admitting he’d thought about bringing one himself.

I lay my head on what feels like a million pounds’ worth of down. I am not able to enjoy the luxury for long. It is like having a newborn. Every hour and a half, Liz comes to wake us for the next visit, and we smarten up and get out of the bus. David chats away to people, does a few interviews, and on we go. By 3 a.m. I am paralysed with exhaustion. I cannot think how David is managing to be so awake and ‘on it’. Then a photographer from The Sun arrives. David sits up looking all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but I cannot actually move. I lie there, just by him, with a blanket over me, hoping that I am invisible, a bit like a small child playing hide-and-seek who thinks if they shut their eyes, no one will see them. Arthur Edwards, who I learn is something of a legend in the trade, takes a number of photographs of David that appear to feature a small ear protruding from his left elbow. This is me.

At dawn we arrive at the fish market in Grimsby. The place is a hive of activity, and the sea air feels refreshing after the sleepless night. Back on the bus we continue to drive south. All I want is a shower and a large cup of coffee, but neither is on the agenda. We are on a mission to pick off as many target seats as we can, and we do not have time for comfort breaks. The bus smells of unwashed bodies and fish.

By lunchtime there is rebellion brewing amongst the journalists in the front of the bus, which – given that they are representing us to the nation on the eve of the poll – feels more than a little perilous. Joey Jones, deputy political editor for Sky News, saves the day by buying a large hunk of steak and switching on the bus’s yet-to-be-used oven. By the time we have finished listening to a children’s choir in Wales, Joey is handing out steak sandwiches. Morale is recovering. The smell is now of unwashed bodies, fish, and Sunday roast.

In the back, we are tired but in good spirits. We have had our ups and downs but we are now slightly ahead in the polls. Is it by enough? We are far from complacent, but nor are we downcast. Labour has dominated politics for well over a decade, winning three elections and seeing off as many Tory leaders. Driving through the final day of the campaign, our destiny approaching, we feel we are on the cusp of something historic, a winning team in one way or another. And as we arrive in Bristol for the final rally, there is a palpable sense of excitement, not least because we can just about reach out and touch the finishing line.

We check into a hotel in the centre of the city. We have time for a cup of tea and a bit of speech prep. David looks at his dishevelled hair in the mirror and I suggest we try a little of the dry shampoo that Isabel Spearman, Samantha’s fashionable and determined right-hand woman, has given us in the event of a ‘bad hair day’. I am nervous with the can. David grabs it off me, spraying it generously over his head at close range. I look at him aghast. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asks. ‘You’ve gone completely grey,’ I say.

Liz comes in. ‘Five minutes,’ she announces. I point at the grey-headed David. We clearly need more than five minutes. He rushes into the shower while Liz holds up the rally. I have another cup of tea.

And that is our work done for the 2010 campaign. Tomorrow the country will go to the polls. David will vote in Dean, and I make my way back to London to vote in the morning. I arrive home happy to see the faces of my children before it is time to put them to bed.

They are old enough to know that tomorrow is a big day, but too young to really understand. ‘We want the blue team to win, don’t we Mummy?’ We settle with that.

AFTER ALL OF THE strategy meetings, planning sessions, conference calls, interviews, speeches, TV appearances, visits, and debates, all of the hours spent in cars, trains, helicopters, and planes – plus, the all-nighter on the bus – everything comes to an abrupt standstill on election day, as there are strict rules about what the media can report while the polls are open. And there is only one sort of picture the media want on election day – that of each of the party leaders voting for themselves.

Instead, this is primarily GOTV Day – ‘Get Out the Vote’ – the busiest day of the election for the party machine. This is what all the canvassing is for: to find out who your supporters are so you can mobilise them on the day. By late afternoon, anyone you were counting on who hasn’t turned up to vote should be getting a call. By late evening, the team should be literally offering to drive any ‘no shows’ to the polling stations. In a rural seat they might even pass through the villages with a loud hailer.

Every election day we face a choice: add an extra couple of people to the GOTV effort, or hunker down and start planning for what will happen if we win. Both times, we have gone with the latter, for the simple reason that if you win, there is a great deal to plan. You need to form a government for a start. And then you need to start announcing things – big, strong things which speak to your values and your agenda. First impressions stick, and you’ve got about a hundred days to form them.

THURSDAY, 6 MAY. I am one of the first at my local polling station. Clutching a large cup of coffee, I then join my colleagues and we set off to the country. The plan is to spend the day at Steve Hilton’s house in Oxfordshire, out of the sight of the media who are gathering a few miles down the road at David’s house in Dean.

David, George, Oliver, Ed, Andy, and I, along with our Chief Whip, Patrick McLoughlin, converge on the farmhouse that Steve has quite recently bought with his wife, Rachel. Steve is buzzing round the kitchen when we arrive – extremely house-proud. We settle down to work around the kitchen table. And although none of us are sure of victory, we plan for a win, running through our initial plans for the first three days, first week, first month. There are key events to schedule, like the first meeting of the Cabinet and of the newly formed National Security Council. If we win, we have a Queen’s speech to prepare. We have also promised to hold an emergency budget this side of the summer break, since we have ‘in year’ cuts that we plan to announce. And of course, we have a government to form.

We talk over the make-up of the Cabinet. Some of it is straightforward: William Hague will go to the Foreign Office, George to the Treasury. Some of it isn’t. We are mulling over George’s idea of putting Theresa May in the Home Office. Then there is the question of whether we reach out to Iain Duncan Smith – possibly for the Welfare job. IDS has made a name for himself over the past few years campaigning on social justice issues. David wants to build broad church if he gets the chance to form a government.

More sensitive than all of this is our discussion around the Lib Dems. In the event we don’t quite pull it off – that is, if we win the most seats but fall short of a majority – the question will then be whether to reach out to the Lib Dems, and if so, on what basis? The ‘what basis’ part is what we have asked Oliver to think about very, very privately over the last week. He has read and reread the Lib Dem manifesto, churned through their past statements, and met privately at George’s house with William Hague and Ed to mull over the issues. Oliver already has a handle on how to form part of a common agenda for some sort of coalition agreement, formal or otherwise.

After lunch, like nursery school children, we all go for quiet time – wandering round the house to find a bed or a sofa to lie down on. Most of us are far too anxious to rest, but it is a good idea, in theory. We will be up all night.

We re-gather in Steve and Rachel’s kitchen a few hours later with cups of tea and work in hand. Soon George has a date in the field next door with a helicopter, which will take him up to his count in Tatton. Oliver too will disappear, to Dorset. The rest of us will go with David to his home at Dean. We do a sweepstake of how many seats we think we will win. Ominously, we all choose numbers that suggest we will not win an outright majority. Then we say our goodbyes. When we next meet we will know the outcome of the election (or at least we think we will).

Samantha is at the house with Isabel Spearman when we arrive. There is a mounting tension. David strides round the garden. We offer to help Samantha with the supper. Chopping is therapeutic. There is nothing really to do until the ten o’clock news. Isabel pulls me aside: ‘You need some make-up,’ she says, looking at me critically. Half an hour later I join the others, made up to the nines, feeling rather self-conscious. We sit down for dinner. Texts are flying in from friends, family, political colleagues, which we share with each other. Some good news, some less. It is difficult to tell what is going on.

The chimes of the news bring with them the exit polls, which forecast a hung parliament with the Tories as the largest party. We are neither surprised nor disheartened, considering the news as a final forecast rather than the definitive result. The difference between being the largest party and the overall winner is so slight it is in fact difficult to call. We feel cautiously optimistic. At least we are somewhere near a win of some sort. David looks set to be prime minister.

But the evening does not feel like a victory. Even though the results are coming in strong for us, they are also fairly consistent for Labour. We are neck and neck when, in the early hours of the morning, it is time for us to head off to David’s Witney count. There is not room for us all to attend the count, which is a sought-after ticket for local members, so Ed and I remain in the car, listening to the radio in a sort of wakeful sleepiness. When David finally emerges from the count, we start back to London, a convoy of cars. BBC and ITV helicopters are above us, filming our journey. Some random results are coming in, keeping us away from definitive victory. It feels like we are driving into limbo land.

It must be after 5 a.m. when we finally arrive at CCHQ. There is an army of cameras outside, but I am too tired to notice. We make our way up to the third floor, past the many campaign staff who are watching the final results trickling in, through to the office towards the back of the building that we have made our own. There is no mood of celebration. We sip our cups of strong builder’s tea apprehensively while we wait for George to return from Cheshire.

It is still too early to call, but it looks as though we have fallen short of the golden number needed to form a government on our own. There are 650 seats in Parliament, so strictly speaking, we need 326. But historically Sinn Féin have never turned up to Westminster, as they refuse to say the oath to the Queen, so you can achieve a working majority with 323. At 6 a.m. we are some way off that and heading for the first hung parliament for thirty-six years. No party commands a majority in the House of Commons, so no party will be able to get their legislation through (in other words, govern) without an alliance of some sort with another party.

We consider our options. There is the possibility of a ‘confidence and supply’ agreement with the Lib Dems, which guarantees their support for key votes (such as the Finance Bill) without actually forming a government with them. But we all fear the instability that comes with a minority government. The country is in crisis and fixing it will be a nightmare with no majority. We would have to chase every vote, including within our own party. This feels too precarious when we can see the difficult things which need doing. This points towards striking a more formal agreement with the Lib Dems …

In the early hours of Friday morning, with results still to come in, David does not want to make any decisions. He wants to return to the hotel, await the final numbers, and then regroup after he has had some sleep. So, we head back to the bleak Westminster Bridge Plaza and agree to meet again in just over an hour. I set my alarm so that I will have time for a shower. I feel surprisingly rejuvenated after it, despite my lack of sleep.

The morning bulletins declare a hung parliament. The country is already in economic turmoil and now we seem to be in political stalemate. The markets open and react badly to the lack of firm leadership. The news then turns to Greece, where people are rioting on the streets as the Eurozone crisis continues. The world feels very fragile. My phone is filling up with a barrage of texts – some from friends and family being supportive, others from anxious MPs and journalists wanting to know what is going on.

The end result has us on 36 per cent, with 306 seats in Parliament. Labour are on 258 and the Lib Dems on 57. In just one Parliament, as Leader of the Opposition, David has pulled the party out of its rut. For about a decade, the Tories consistently polled at around 33 per cent; last night, we won 97 new seats, the biggest Conservative gain since 1931 and the end of thirteen years of Labour rule. It is certainly a defeat for Gordon Brown. However, it seems it was simply too big a stretch to reach an all-out victory in one go. We are 20 seats short of a majority, with too few to form a government on our own.

Now we are stuck in a no-man’s land at the Plaza. I wander down the corridor to David’s suite. I don’t feel despondent though. Looking out over the river Thames, my coffee in hand, it seems like the game is not yet over.

‘I’ve thought about it overnight,’ says David, as we reassemble for breakfast in his suite. ‘I want to form a coalition.’

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