Читать книгу Remaking One Nation - Nick Timothy - Страница 9

One year earlier, things had been very different indeed. The referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union had been held in June 2016. David Cameron resigned and, after a short leadership campaign in which her rivals self-immolated, one after another, Theresa May became Prime Minister.

As she emerged from the car that had taken her from Buckingham Palace to Downing Street, it was difficult to hear anything from where I was standing, waiting, inside Number Ten. The shutters of cameras opened and closed, and helicopters circled above. At last, standing behind the official lectern for the first time, she addressed the country. ‘If you’re from an ordinary working-class family’, she said, ‘life is much harder than many people in Westminster realise … I know you’re working around the clock, I know you’re doing your best, and I know that sometimes life can be a struggle.’ Looking straight down the camera and into millions of living rooms, she promised, ‘the government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few, but by yours.’

It was the shortest speech I had written for her, but it was by far the highest profile. As she spoke, Downing Street officials and her political team waited inside the Number Ten hallway. The Cabinet Secretary, the late Sir Jeremy Heywood, motioned to me to stand beside him. I was doubled over with anxiety, but as she spoke it became clear there was no need for nerves. The speech was a triumph. Theresa had been on the Conservative frontbench for nearly twenty years, and Home Secretary for the last six. But this was her introduction to the nation, and the public seemed to like what they heard and saw. The speech catapulted her to unprecedented approval ratings, which remained unusually positive all the way until the general election a year later.

The first job was to reshuffle her ministerial team. George Osborne, Cameron’s Chancellor and author of ‘Project Fear’, the negative campaign against Brexit, was sacked. The media were led to believe he had resigned, and when a member of the Downing Street team corrected his version of events, he claimed to be the victim of vicious dirty tricks. Michael Gove, who had backed Boris Johnson’s leadership bid before suddenly launching his own campaign, was also sent to the backbenches. Despite his intellect and talent, Tory MPs were angry about Michael’s perceived treachery, which made it difficult to appoint him to a top job, but Theresa had never liked him and she played the role of executioner with enthusiasm.

The reshuffle was sweeping, and the media worked out that the Cabinet had more state-school educated ministers than any Conservative government before it. The front page of the Daily Mail hailed the ‘march of the meritocrats’.¹ But it was bloodier than it was intended to be. Stephen Crabb, the Work and Pensions Secretary, resigned after failing to promise allegations about his sex life would not continue. Claire Perry and Anna Soubry refused frontbench roles as soon as it became clear they would not be given their own departments.

The summer passed quickly and quietly. Early Brexit talks with other European leaders began. Fairly minor policy announcements were made. Theresa’s low-key and understated style seemed to mark a welcome change in the way the country was governed.

Then came the first controversy. In September, Theresa made a speech in which she said she wanted to make Britain ‘the world’s great meritocracy’. She outlined a new policy that would build on years of English school reform, and in particular free schools and academies, schools set up and sponsored by teachers, parents and community groups. Acknowledging that some communities lack the social capital to make free schools and academies a success, we wanted to get more groups into the system and running good state schools. Private schools and universities would be made to do more. Rules that effectively prevented Catholic – but not other faith groups – from setting up schools would be changed. And new selective schools would be permitted, on the strict condition that they also sponsored good primary schools and non-selective secondaries, and made sure their intakes included more children from poorer families.

The announcement blew up before it was even made. The Education Secretary, Justine Greening, turned out to oppose any new selective schools. She never said so to Theresa, but was less shy when briefing the newspapers. Shortly before the speech, Jonathan Slater, the Department for Education’s permanent secretary, accompanied Greening on her way to a meeting with the PM in Downing Street. There, he was photographed with a folder exposing a sheet of paper revealing the Education Secretary’s concern about new selective schools. Slater had not been invited to attend the meeting, and he did not try to come in. But the damage was done. The stunt was cynical, cheap and, coming from a senior official, completely inappropriate. But it worked: it sparked a row about grammar schools, and the policy never got off the ground.

Next came a warning sign about Theresa’s own decision-making. In July, she had decided to ‘pause’ the process leading to the construction of a new nuclear reactor at Hinkley Point in Somerset. The project would be delivered by the French energy giant, EDF, and financed in part by the Chinese General Nuclear Power Group, a state-run business accused by the United States of stealing nuclear secrets.² It was eye-wateringly expensive, and relied on technology that had never been tried before. It also meant increasing Chinese involvement in Britain’s critical national infrastructure. Under the terms of a ‘progressive entry’ agreement, Hinkley would be followed by new reactors at Sizewell in Suffolk and Bradwell in Essex. At each stage, the role of the Chinese in running the plants would deepen.

The decision to pause the deal was rancorous enough. The Chinese protested. A junior minister threatened to resign. And Theresa offended Jeremy Heywood when she questioned the contract: he thought she was accusing him of colluding with the French to push the deal through. But after all the hassle of the pause – the controversy, the bruised relations with China and France, and the clash with her most senior civil servant – in September, she backed down. Persuaded that cancellation would send a bad message to the markets so soon after the Brexit vote, and worrying about the need to keep the French onside through the Brexit talks, she let the deal pass. It would not be the last time she would be accused of talking tough before backing down. But at this stage, the criticism was fairly limited.

At the start of October, we headed to Birmingham for the party conference. ‘A country that works for everyone’, was emblazoned around the conference centre, and the mood was buoyant. Theresa spoke on the first day, the Sunday, and set out what would later be criticized as unnecessary red lines for the Brexit negotiations. ‘Brexit means Brexit’, she promised: Britain would take back control of its laws, its borders and its money. The audience was in ecstasy.

At the close of the conference, on Wednesday, she spoke again. This was the opportunity to set out her domestic priorities, and the way she intended to govern. Chris Wilkins and I had worked on the speech for weeks, and, in praising ‘the good that government can do’, it marked a clear break with recent Conservative thinking. The Daily Mail lauded its ‘bold vision’ and even the Guardian respected its ambitious attempt to recast conservatism.³ As the draftsmen, I remember Chris and I were most pleased by praise from Peggy Noonan, the US columnist and former speechwriter to President Reagan, who from across the Atlantic declared it the ‘beginning of a political future’.⁴

It was only later that the speech was attacked for its condemnation of ‘citizens of nowhere’. It suited campaigners and political opponents to claim that Theresa had used this language to describe opponents of Brexit. But this was nonsense, as anybody listening at the time knew. Her targets were the more irresponsible and selfish members of big international business. The speech was absolutely clear. ‘Today’, she said, ‘too many people in positions of power behave as though they have more in common with international elites than with the people down the road, the people they employ, the people they pass in the street. But if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere. You don’t understand what the very word “citizenship” means.’⁵

The speech was an ambitious blueprint for what we wanted to do. But translating these promises into policy and reality would take more time. Consultation papers were launched on corporate governance, industrial strategy and schools. Fiona was developing a landmark domestic violence bill. In Downing Street and across Whitehall, work was underway on regional policy, market reform, workers’ rights, housing, health, social care, racial justice and mental health. But to me it all felt like it was going too slowly. Behind the scenes, problems were mounting.