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When the hardback edition of this book was published, there was only one issue at the top of the news agenda: Brexit. Britain’s still-unfulfilled decision to leave the European Union dominated conversations. It divided colleagues, friends, even families. It had already demanded the resignation of two successive prime ministers – me, and Theresa May – and it was, though we didn’t yet know it, about to lead to the landslide election of the next, Boris Johnson.

A year on, much has changed. Britain has left the EU, although an agreement on our future relationship with Europe has still not been reached. But that issue, like so many others, has largely been eclipsed by the deadly coronavirus that, tragically, has caused the deaths of thousands and changed everyday life for almost every person on earth.

One country’s withdrawal from a continental bloc and a pandemic engulfing every nation on the planet – the two issues might seem totally unconnected. Yet they do have something in common. They both involve the deep, tangled interdependence and interconnectedness of the modern world; one in which we trade and travel, communicate and collaborate, sharing not just the languages we speak but many of the laws we live by and the institutions that assist our cooperation. Politicians call this ‘globalisation’. And the challenges the phenomenon poses are shared by every politician in every country. That is the true common agenda.

In many ways, this book is the story of one politician in an increasingly globalised world. I had been a Member of Parliament for three months when the planes crashed into the World Trade Center, proving once again that Islamist extremism was not confined to the Islamic world. As leader of the UK Conservative Party, one of my earliests acts was to focus on climate change, the biggest, most global issue of our time. My first term as prime minister was dominated by the aftermath of the financial crash whose impact profoundly affected every developed economy.

The other issues on my desk in Downing Street were global too. They ranged from the Ebola epidemic in Africa and the Arab Spring in the Middle East to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The consequences of the global scourges of the early twenty-first century – terrorism, dictatorship, poverty, corruption – were then visited upon Europe, including Britain, in the form of the biggest migration crisis since the Second World War. Indeed, I established the cross-departmental National Security Council (NSC) for this very reason: foreign policy is domestic policy. You can’t disentangle the two. As I observe on page 533, what happens on the streets of Islamabad plays out on the streets of Bradford. Or, to bring that sentiment up to date, what’s sold in a Chinese animal market can bring the world to a standstill.

I remain a passionate globalist. The process of globalisation has helped to drive extraordinary progress for humankind, including lifting billions of people out of poverty. To be sure, a big, open, engaged world brings problems. But a big-world approach is the only way we can resolve them and continue to deliver prosperity and security for all in this still-young century.

Some might misinterpret this stance as a devotion to some warm notion of a global good over the cold, hard realities of our national interest. So it is important to clarify that one of the biggest reasons I believe in working with other nations is because it is right for our nation. I care about our relationship with other countries precisely because I care above all about our country.

I would take the argument further. As a Conservative, I believe in the nation state. In most cases, nations reflect a sense of identity, born out of a shared history. And because we feel we belong, we find it easier to share, to cooperate, to accept short-term sacrifices for long-term benefits. The nation state works. Global institutions should serve these states, not the other way round.

Of course, the arrival of the pandemic has thrown that outward, pro-globalist outlook into question. Is it still the right approach?

It has also made me read the contents of this book – and, consequently, my time in power – in a different light. So much of my premiership was dedicated to fixing the last global crisis, the 2008 financial crash. Did our remedy leave Britain better or worse prepared for this bigger shock? I went all-out pursuing strong relationships with both India and China. Was that misguided, or even counterproductive? How should we respond to the tide of populism and the demagogic leaders globalisation has brought with it? Will globalism cause the planet’s destruction or be its saviour? And, yes, there are questions about institutions: do we need to radically reform, or in some cases give up on, some of the big multilateral institutions – the United Nations, NATO, the World Health Organization … the European Union?

First, finance. A big theme of this book is the fiscal retrenchment known as austerity that was undertaken by the coalition government. Some have alleged that in the way we dealt with a crisis that pre-dated us we were storing up problems for crises that came after us. I would maintain the opposite is true.

Between 2010 and 2016 we reduced the UK’s perilously high budget deficit from a projected 11 per cent to 3 per cent of GDP (it was more or less eliminated by a Conservative government soon after). People mocked me for setting such store by this metric: the difference between what was coming into the country’s coffers and what was going out. The truth is, as I put it on page 180, ‘nothing matters more than your country having finances strong enough to be able to cope – because you don’t know whether the next crisis is twenty or five years away’. Of course, as we were still running annual deficits, the overall level of debt continued to rise, but it went up by far less than if we had done nothing. This meant that we would have more capacity to act when the next crisis hit. We did fix the roof when the sun was shining.

As it happened, that crisis came ten years later: COVID-19 was the rainy day we had been saving for. Our actions meant that the next but one administration was able to offer an unprecedented package of measures to prop up the economy (I sat watching Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s press conferences thinking how vital it was that we had taken those difficult decisions when we did).

The accusation has been made that our nation was unprepared for a pandemic. The reality is that, for a PM, the prospect is never far from your mind. Indeed a litany of what-ifs – mass terror attacks, cyber warfare, natural disasters, nuclear war and yes, pandemics – hangs over you when you’re in No. 10. As I recount in the pages that follow, officials frequently wander into your office and warn of the next Armageddon. Your job is to decide and to prioritise.

I was clear that Ebola posed a global threat, which is why when the disease struck Africa we leapt into action with America and France. It’s also why, following that outbreak, we established the government-wide International Health Risks Network to survey the world continuously for viruses heading our way.

I was also convinced of the dangers of antimicrobial resistance – the prospect of diseases no longer responding to antibiotics – and so I put the issue on the global agenda for the first time. And I knew a pandemic would come one day, possibly sooner rather than later. That’s why I made it a ‘tier one risk’ at the National Security Council. We also established a sub-committee to deal with Threats, Hazards, Resilience and Contingencies. The accusation – which is partly accurate – is that subsequently not enough was done to prepare specifically for what followed. But this is what strategists mean when they talk about ‘known unknowns’. We knew a pandemic was coming, we just didn’t know what type. It is now clear, in a way it wasn’t then, that the extensive preparations made for pandemic flu were not wholly transferable to handling a pandemic of a very different kind.

However, it is not only the vulnerabilities of individual nations that have become apparent during the events of the past year. It is, as is prefigured here, the failure of key global institutions, including the World Health Organization. (In fact, my frustration with the WHO’s sclerosis and misdirection during the Ebola outbreak, described in Chapter 38, led me to suggest after the epidemic had subsided that I should make reform of this UN agency a priority for the UK. Officials fell about laughing. ‘It would be your life’s work,’ they said. ‘And you would fail.’) If wholesale reform is impossible, we must sort out the parts that most require fixing. I have suggested elsewhere establishing a new Global Virus Surveillance Organisation to track, understand and publicise emerging viruses. This could be done through building a network of scientific and academic organisations. It should be science-led, industry-backed and non-political.

Of course, this leads me on to another multilateral reform that I did pursue in office – and which was ultimately unsuccessful. Changing the European Union.

Whether it came to calling for reform in the EU or the WHO, my feeling was generally one of being a lone voice. Leaders seemed then – and even more so now – to be divided into those so devoted to the multilateral system that they slavishly supported its institutions and those so sickened by the system that they wanted to do away with them altogether. As is so often the case in the following chapters, I fell somewhere between the two, in the pragmatic middle. I was so convinced by the importance of global cooperation that I determined we should improve the system’s institutions. Change to conserve. That has always been the Conservative way. And that was where my strategy to renegotiate Britain’s place in the European Union, and to put it to a nationwide vote, came in.

As I said in the Foreword to the first edition of this book, I have many regrets around the referendum. From the timing of the vote to the expectations I allowed to build about the renegotiation, there are many things that I would do differently.

But on the central question of whether it was right to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the EU and give people the chance to have their say on it, my view remains that this was the correct approach to take. I believe that, particularly with the Eurozone crisis, the EU was changing before our very eyes, and our already precarious place in it was becoming harder to sustain. Renegotiating our position was my attempt to address that, and putting the outcome to a public vote was fair, necessary and, I believe, ultimately inevitable. Frankly I couldn’t see a future where Britain didn’t hold a referendum. And I am a democrat. I believe people should be able to have their say – especially on an issue as important as this.

It was awful to see whole sections of society torn in two by the subject, and painful to witness three years of anguish in the effort to implement the decision. It has been traumatic for the country. And for the Conservative Party, too. It has led to the departure of talented, socially progressive, liberally minded MPs. I lament this.

Has the Conservative Party changed out of all recognition because of Brexit? No. I support much of what the government has been doing and specifically its mission to help those parts of our country that feel left behind. But there is a potential danger. There is no necessary contradiction in wanting to appeal to working-class voters in the sort of towns energised by Brexit – the current ‘levelling up’ agenda – while remaining liberal, progressive and inclusive. Indeed that’s what I tried to do, opening more good schools, reforming welfare, cutting taxes for the lowest paid, building a Northern Powerhouse, legalising gay marriage, broadening the backgrounds of our candidates and engaging voters in parts of the country that had never voted Tory before. However, there’s often a problem in politics of artificial signposting. To many, Brexit has been the signpost of a party that is less liberal. That doesn’t have to be the case. And if it was to be so, it would be a grave mistake. The Conservative Party can – and must – remain a broad church.

While the coronavirus crisis has demonstrated the importance of European-wide cooperation, it has also laid bare once again some of the divides within, and flaws of, the EU and its current structures.

Of course it’s unfair to castigate the bloc too much on this issue since health is a national responsibility, and the international bodies that should step up first are those that are worldwide and those that oversee public health. But the crisis rapidly became an economic one and the EU was slow to react.

Countries like Spain and Italy were left frustrated by the failure of European institutions to do more, by the restrictions on their fiscal space for action and by the refusal of northern countries to step in. As I repeat time and again in this book, a single currency requires at least some elements of a common fiscal policy in order to work. Just as we didn’t have to worry that Manchester would refuse to support London in its hour of need, Spain needed to see that solidarity from Germany.

If the first phase of the EU’s response demonstrated the urgency of reform, the second phase showed the huge difficulties – and profound questions – that arise as attempts are made to bring about any sort of reform.

The proposal for a €500 billion fund immediately divided those members favouring budget control from those wanting greater solidarity. Had Britain still been a member of the EU I am sure we would have argued that more funding was required but that it should be for the Eurozone countries to both fund and receive the money (so addressing one of the fundamental flaws of the single currency). And yet, as the money has to be spent on measures to improve the single market, we would have wanted some safeguards and involvement.

The Brussels officialdom would have cried ‘more opt-outs, more special treatment’ and thrown up their hands in despair. The harder end of UK Eurosceptics would have argued, once more, that the inevitable moment for UK departure had arrived.

I am sure that we could have found another UK ‘special status’ solution, but the legal arrangements and parliamentary scrutiny (and both would be necessary) would have brought forth the arguments about the UK’s position in the EU all over again. Those who believe that the reform and referendum debate in the run-up to 2016 was an unnecessary confection cooked up for political reasons are profoundly wrong. Staying in the single market while remaining out of the single currency was going to require major reform if it was to be sustainable, even in the relatively short term. Without it the question of membership would have come back again and again, leading eventually, inevitably, to a referendum.

My greatest regret remains that we couldn’t continue to find a special status that kept us in those parts of the EU that were essential to our national interest while staying out of the parts that were delivering ‘ever closer union’. John Major’s single currency and Social Chapter opt-outs, Tony Blair’s carve-outs from Justice and Home Affairs, and the decision by all recent UK prime ministers to stay out of the Schengen no-borders scheme have all been part of the same British picture.

I added opt-outs from bailing out Eurozone countries and Eurozone banks while ensuring we weren’t part of schemes to redistribute EU migrants who had already arrived in Europe. My renegotiation would have added, among other things, opting out of ‘ever closer union’ altogether, with safeguards for the pound and our position in the single market, while placing tough welfare limits on EU migrants.

All these opt-outs seem messy and complicated when set against the apparent simplicities of either full-on EU solidarity or ‘taking back control’. The pragmatic, practical path is often the hardest to take …

Of course, the pandemic puts not just multilateralism but bilateralism into the spotlight – and one relationship in particular.

I staked a lot on forging better relations with China. I believed that the more we brought the country into the rules-based international system, by trading and engaging with it, the more we could encourage it to play by those rules.

It would be tempting to say that, given China’s slowness to report what was happening in Wuhan and the fake news published since, cooperation is futile, even wrong. I am not stubborn or dogmatic in my thinking about China. Indeed, I had already modified my views on the country between my early years as a politician and the period I spent writing this book; as I describe later on, while I believe a more democratic path for China is inherently desirable, I no longer believe it is inevitable.

But then I ask myself: do I really believe that it is better to shun China? Will it cooperate with us more if we condemn it, as the US president has? By disengaging, surely we would be playing into China’s hands. After all, that would create a vacuum. The danger is that as the US stops funding the WHO, China will be seen as more of a leader. What we need is engagement combined with hard-headed realism. It is that pragmatic middle ground – so often advocated in these pages, so often a vacant space in these troubled times – once again.

Here, with China, the problems and advantages of globalisation have been encapsulated. We have become so entwined with this country that we have been both crippled by a disease that originated there and subsequently dependent on its supply chains for the medical equipment we need to fight coronavirus.

The undeniable pre-eminence of this one-party state is frequently cited as proof for the claim that liberal democracy is dying on its feet. Yet I conclude in this book that the opposite is true, that the desire for freedom is too strong and the success of open markets and open political systems too clear for the world to retreat from it. Has the arrival of the pandemic caused me to revise that? Hasn’t the coronavirus response shown autocrats to be the new role models? The argument goes that they are investing in security (when we liberal democracies aren’t), building massive infrastructure (when we aren’t), and thinking strategically and long term (ditto). Aren’t they better at dealing with this sort of crisis?

It’s true that the strongmen have been emboldened by the pandemic. Xi has used it to grab more power. Trump has used it as an excuse to enact policies and make statements that even he wouldn’t normally get away with. Yet I maintain that populists are the worst leaders in a global crisis. Presidents Trump and Bolsonaro do a fine job of proving this theory. What’s more, the countries that have dealt best with COVID-19 – Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, New Zealand – are all democracies. They have met it with leadership, boldness and clear communication with electorates. That is something we as fellow democracies are better placed to emulate. (One thing we can also note from the public response to COVID is that our assumptions about what people are prepared to sacrifice in the short term for a longer-term benefit might have been wrong.)

However, we cannot disregard the populists altogether. They have been elected for a reason. The grievances they feed off are real. Too many people have been left behind economically by globalisation, too many communities have been changed too rapidly. Immigration has been too high in too many places for too long. Meanwhile many of the multilateral organisations feel domineering yet remote. I outline in the chapters that follow how I spent a lot of time trying to deal with those things – to give our people the skills they need in the new economy; to rebalance our economy between our regions; to get a better sense of control and fairness in immigration; to reform institutions like the EU. I’ll admit now that we didn’t go far enough. But at the same time I would say we – the governments I led, and subsequent ones – must have been doing something right, since there is a case for arguing that Britain is the only country in Europe that hasn’t experienced the long-term, far-left and hard-right populist insurgencies that we’ve seen across the rest of the continent.

That balance between heeding grievances and pushing for reform must also apply to two other issues that have gained more traction since this book first came out.

The first is climate change. We are making huge progress on halting this. As I frequently point out to my teenage daughter, an enthusiastic activist, the UK’s carbon emissions are not just lower than they were in 1994, they are lower than in 1894. But the Greta Thunbergs and Extinction Rebellions of this world would tell a different story. They need to be careful they don’t mirror the populists, meeting a very real grievance (the warming of our planet) with hyperbole (‘the world will end in twenty years’), impossible solutions (‘we must end all carbon emissions tomorrow’) and tribalism (climate action is something for only certain people who subscribe to certain beliefs). None of that will lead to the rational, reasonable, open, pragmatic approach the climate crisis so obviously requires. Again, it is that approach that is needed to address so many of the problems of the day and that brand of politics that I advocate throughout this book.

The second issue is racism. The death of George Floyd in America rightly sparked a global outcry, not just against the violent racism displayed by police in Minneapolis, but against racism at every level, both outward and overt, insidious and institutional. Reforming stop and search, introducing name-blind job applications and forming the most diverse Cabinet in history were some small steps the governments I led took towards righting these wrongs. Free schools, the Pupil Premium, Start-Up Loans, Help to Buy and National Citizen Service were designed to lift everyone up, but had a disproportionate effect on minorities. Of course, there is much, much more to do. But, as with climate change, we must be careful not to undermine a genuine, heinous problem – the quality of people’s lives being dictated by the colour of their skin – by obsessing over symbols, playing identity politics and stoking culture wars. Those things not only distract. They actually entrench division – even create division – when we should be building a society rooted in the fact that, as the late MP Jo Cox is quoted as saying on page 675, ‘we are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us’.

I have tried throughout to mention as many people as I can who worked with me over the years. I am sorry to anyone I’ve missed. I am so proud of you all – not only of what we achieved together but what so many have gone on to do, in finding centre-right answers to the biggest problems we face, from climate change to poverty, modern slavery, an ageing society, delivering government services and more.

I also want to thank those who helped me in writing this book. Danny Finkelstein, who listened to me download my thoughts over the years and helped me shape my arguments when the time came to write about it all. Jonathan Meakin, whose research and fact-checking capacity at times seemed equivalent to an entire government department. Arabella Pike at HarperCollins, my late agent Ed Victor and Katherine Patrick for her sterling publicity programme the first time round. Special thanks go to all those people who contributed, commented and reviewed various drafts – especially Nigel Casey, Camilla Cavendish, Peter Chadlington, Kate Fall, Andrew Feldman, Rupert Harrison, Jo Johnson, Craig Oliver, George Osborne, Hugh Powell, Oliver Letwin, Ed Llewellyn and Liz Sugg. The biggest thank you by far is to Jess Cunniffe, who first interviewed me on the campaign trail for a Milton Keynes newspaper, became my speechwriter in Downing Street and, eventually, helped me to write these memoirs.

I have been so lucky in so many ways in my life – I haven’t tried to hide that in the pages that follow – but my greatest fortune has been to find a partner who has been the love of my life, my best friend and my rock. All these years on, I am still in awe of her. So I dedicate this book to Samantha. And together we want to thank those friends who have been our rocks, especially Chris and Venetia Lockwood and Mary Wynne Finch.

This book is not a historical diary, or a political potboiler of who said what to whom and when. It is my take on my life and my political career, done my way. It is to help us understand the past and give us some pause for the future. It is for us today, and – I hope – for posterity. It is For the Record.

David Cameron

September 2020