Cameron: Practically a Conservative

At first Major left the CRD as it was. It had proved itself effective over the summer. But Cameron must have felt a little vulnerable when Kenneth Baker – with whom he got on very well – was moved to make way for a new party Chairman, Chris Patten. Patten liked Cameron well enough, however. He certainly shared his and Lansley’s analysis that Labour was weak on the issue of trust. It had already been decided as early as the summer of 1990 (nearly two years before the poll as it turned out) that the next election would be fought on the proposition that, if the voters were asked whether they could really place their faith in Labour, sufficient numbers would balk to allow the Tories back in. But when to put it to the test? When should a new PM go to the polls? Immediately on succession, riding a wave of goodwill in order to secure his own mandate? Or after a steadying period of calm in which the new premier has demonstrated his fitness for office? Unsurprisingly Major wanted both options, long and short, kept open, so Central Office was secretly set to work preparing for the possibility of an election that autumn. For Cameron this meant the daunting task of preparing the official ‘campaign guide’ – a vast document that laid out every Tory policy in clear and simple language, as well as explaining ‘attack lines’ against each Labour and Liberal Democrat alternative.

It was at this point that Cameron and Hilton began to forge their working partnership as message-crafters. The Tories had rehired Saatchi & Saatchi as their advertising agency, but Lansley says the admen struggled to understand the nuances of Smith Square’s new messages. The solution was to second Hilton to the agency to provide a link that chained the admen to the politicians. Cameron was to be the second such link. Cameron and Hilton worked on the political messages emanating from Smith Square and then communicated them to the Saatchi brothers and their lieutenants, carrying their resulting ideas back to Central Office. The two had also become personally close, spending a summer holiday that year together in Italy, the first of a number of shared vacations in the years to come. It was a process that consolidated Cameron’s power, according to his friend Angie Bray. ‘Where Dave really came into his own was taking on the whole Labour threat in the build-up to the 1992 election campaign. That was really when Dave was at his most powerful at Central Office.’

And then in early summer the call came from Number 10. Could Mr Cameron please help the Prime Minister prepare for Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs)? This was to be his first close-up insight into how government works. PMQs – then a twice-weekly affair – became the highlights of his working week. Every Tuesday and Thursday the twenty-five-year-old would get up very early to read all the newspapers in Number 10. Also present was a new-intake backbencher, David Davis, who was given the task of distributing to loyal MPs friendly questions that give the PM some respite from the Question Time onslaught.

At 9 a.m. Cameron (but not Davis) was called up to the room directly beneath the Number 10 flat for the key meeting with Major. Here the Prime Minister would decide which issues he would attack on and which he needed to be prepared to defend. Not only did those meetings educate Cameron about Major’s view of the full range of subjects, domestic and international, he also witnessed key decisions being taken – often in anticipation of a Labour attack. After the meeting Cameron would write up Major’s ‘script’ at a little desk reserved for him in the office of Judith Chaplin, Major’s political assistant. The young aide was then invited to a second, lunchtime meeting with the Prime Minister where Major would rehearse his lines over tea and sandwiches.

Cameron himself has described this period of his early career in the sort of military metaphor politicians love. ‘I spent several months in the 1990s combing the newspapers for opposition party quotes which could be made into bullets for Mr Major to fire at Prime Minister’s Questions.’ Gratifyingly for Cameron his source material appreciated his efforts in the armaments factory. ‘John Major’s Commons performances have become sharper of late,’ noted the ‘Atticus’ political diary in the Sunday Times on 30 June 1991. ‘Major had Neil Kinnock squirming on Thursday when he brandished a dreadful piece of doublespeak from Tony Blair, Labour’s employment spokesman, about the impact a minimum wage would have on unemployment. Where did such timely anti-Labour ammunition come from? Step forward David Cameron, of Conservative Central Office, who has been drafted to the prime minister’s question time team with evident effect.’ Cameron had Major quote from a letter Blair had sent on his position on the minimum wage. ‘I have not accepted that the minimum wage will cost jobs. I have simply accepted that the econometric models indicate a potential jobs impact.’ Major scored a hit (#litres_trial_promo) when he shouted across the despatch box that ‘those words would make a weasel blush’.

It is Cameron who must blush, but with satisfaction, to read his notices after the passage of more than fifteen years, particularly given the inclusion of Blair in the Cameron-crafted fusillade. In fact so gushing is the prose that those of a cynical cast of mind might wonder whether diarists were puffing Cameron in the hope of some useful information from him at a later date. Certainly the young staffer was already attracting a loyal collection of journalists. It is likely that Bruce Anderson, a journalist and John Major’s biographer, had recommended Cameron to the Prime Minister. Anderson had spotted Cameron’s potential and had cultivated his friendship.

And the young staffer was not above telling journalistic friends of the many good stories to which he had access. This boastfulness cost him dear when he bumped into another Old Etonian, Dom Loehnis, at a party around this time. Loehnis, then a reporter at the Sunday Telegraph, recalls how Cameron told him that he was ‘in charge of stories’ at Smith Square, disclosing one about a new Tory education policy that he was about to give to the Independent. Understandably Loehnis took this information, together with its source, back to his newspaper which promptly scooped its rival, thereby landing Cameron in deep trouble. (Surprisingly, perhaps, the incident heralded the start, rather than the end of a relationship. Loehnis marks from this moment the beginning of their friendship.)

There was more puffing copy later in the summer – this time tipping Cameron for stellar promotion right into Major’s kitchen cabinet. The Times reported that there was dissatisfaction that Chaplin was spending too much time fighting the seat of Newbury, incidentally a constituency that includes Peasemore. The newspaper quoted ‘insiders’ saying that she needed help. ‘There is increased speculation (#litres_trial_promo) about the role of David Cameron, head of the political section at Tory Central Office research department, who is credited with improving Major’s performance at prime minister’s question time. With Chaplin inevitably spending even more time in Newbury as the election draws closer, Cameron is being tipped as the man to watch.’ In the event this was to prove the first of a number of false dawns, and those months briefing John Major in 1991 and 1992 remain the closest he has come thus far to working in Number 10 Downing Street.

David Cameron’s two and a half years at the Conservative Research Department equipped him with important political skills, inculcated institutional memory and provided him with his most important political allies. The very high standards set by Cooke and Harris remain a benchmark against which Cameron and Hilton judge the quality of briefing material they are given today. When he succeeded Black as head of the Political Section, Cameron received formal recognition for his tactical nous. His involvement in the ‘Summer Heat on Labour’ campaign further consolidated his reputation for exploiting opponents’ weaknesses. He was considered excellent at preparing Cabinet ministers for media appearances and by 1992 had his own circle of journalistic admirers. In surviving three party chairmen and two leaders, Cameron also showed himself adept at managing internal change. It is likely that he had foreseen the fall of Thatcher and to some extent had prepared for it. Most importantly, however, in Llewellyn, Vaizey, Whetstone and Hilton he had four friends and allies, all of whom were going to play their parts in clearing his way to the top.

GAYFERE STREET General election campaign 1992 (#ulink_b5053463-0eb0-5be0-9bf4-bc3d4c854218)

It was well before dawn when David Cameron slipped into Tory headquarters in Smith Square on 3 March 1992. Assembled before him at 5 a.m. were a team of Tory staffers, many wondering why they had been asked to come to work so early that day. Cameron told them that this was a ‘dry run’ for the election campaign to be announced by John Major the following week. They had about two hours to gut that day’s newspapers, monitor every television and radio bulletin and prepare a brief for the Prime Minister on any topic he might face at a press conference at 8.30 a.m. In addition, said Cameron, the staffers were to prepare the launch of a new policy on education, that day’s theme. The exercise, to be conducted under conditions of extreme secrecy, would determine whether they – and Cameron himself – could be trusted in the heat of the looming battle.

The morning went well and Cameron was duly handed the critical campaign role of briefing John Major before each morning’s press conference. Chris Patten recalls: ‘I approved that appointment. It was a job I had at one time done myself. He was intelligent and hard-working.’ Others who had held the position include Michael Portillo in 1983 and David Willetts in 1987. Cameron has described his role (#litres_trial_promo) as a ‘pretty hairy job’. By now he was being routinely termed ‘high-flying’, but his latest job carried a different order of responsibility.

In fact the Conservatives’ successful election campaign of 1992 strengthened his self-belief as well as his most important political bond. During the campaign Cameron and Hilton shared lodgings in Gayfere Street, a smart Westminster road leading directly on to Smith Square. The house belonged to Alan Duncan, who had made millions in the oil industry before becoming an MP. It had already served as the campaign headquarters for Major’s leadership campaign two years previously. Now it was the ‘bunker’ to which Cameron and Hilton retired for a few hours’ sleep when they could.

It was a frenetic existence, as one of Cameron’s colleagues recalls. Maurice Fraser worked in the Foreign Office and moved on the eve of the election to take on a role briefing the Tory leader. ‘At 4.30 David and I would get into Central Office and pick out the stories that were likely to come up at that morning’s press conference. We’d provide a one-side briefing note with a “line to take” on twenty to thirty subjects. David managed the exercise and did all the domestic issues, I did foreign. His briefing notes and mine would then go to the PM or whoever was doing the presser.’ At 7.30 a.m., Cameron briefed Major himself at Central Office, preparing him for the daily press conference, at a meeting that included Tim Collins and Shaun Woodward, two more youthful Tory aides. Once on the road, Major was kept informed about events back at base by Ed Llewellyn, who travelled with him. The youth of Major’s backroom staff did not go unnoticed at the time. The press dubbed them the ‘brat pack’ – noting that Hilton was too young to have voted in a previous election.

To be re-elected the Tories had to discredit the alternative administration being offered by Neil Kinnock. The party knew from the previous campaign, ‘Summer Heat on Labour’, that sufficient numbers of voters had serious doubts about Labour to give them a chance. Cameron, who had worked on this embryonic campaign, had also helped decide twelve months previously to make ‘trust’ the key issue. The tactic was clear: run a negative pre-campaign undermining confidence in a future Labour government before playing on Major’s reputation for decency during a far more positive ‘short’ campaign, the period from the formal election announcement to polling day.