Introduction

       Four Minutes to Ten

      The first clue that something was wrong was the look on Fiona Hill’s face. One of Theresa May’s two chiefs of staff emerged from the safe space reserved for the senior staff at the rear of the war room in Conservative Campaign Headquarters. She was looking for the other chief, Nick Timothy. Hill was a thin and elegantly dressed brunette in her early forties whose waif-like appearance concealed a backbone of pure galvanised steel. ‘Where’s Nick?’ she asked. Her voice was a sweet Scottish lilt that belied a tongue which could crack like a whip. Hill was a figure of authority but her voice betrayed her nervousness. ‘Her face was just white,’ a witness recalled.

      In the weeks to come those who were there would see the next few moments unfold again and again in their mind’s eye like a Martin Scorsese film, indelible images that jump-cut into a portrait of unfolding disaster. A member of the Conservative media team, which Hill had commanded for the previous seven weeks, said, ‘I looked at her and thought, “That’s not somebody who’s been told good news.” She grabbed Nick and took him to the Derby room.’ It was Thursday 8 June. Election day. The aide looked at his watch, so he would remember the time. ‘The moment I knew it was fucked was at 9.56 p.m.,’ he said.

      Nick Timothy looked both like he meant business and like an egghead – fitting for one of the best Conservative policy brains of his generation. Like many political players he was a figure of contradictions, sometimes easy company, smoothly charming to both men and women. He spoke with an accent that betrayed a little of his Midlands upbringing and a great deal of the relentless inner drive that had taken him from working-class Birmingham to the pinnacle of a Conservative government. Thirty-seven and balding on top, Timothy had become a recognisable public figure thanks to the lustrous beard he wore, which would not have looked out of place on a nineteenth-century Russian novelist. In Tory circles ‘Timmy’ was most usually compared to the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, the last Tory prime minister to sit in the House of Lords.

      When Hill and Timothy emerged from the side room and made their way to the safe space again, others, anxious now, stood rooted to the spot. ‘The two of them were the only people moving,’ one recalled. A Conservative special adviser – a ‘spad’ to all those in Westminster – turned to Liz Sanderson, one of May’s Downing Street staff, and asked what sort of percentage lead the Tories would need in the exit poll to have a good night. ‘I don’t know what good is supposed to look like,’ the adviser said. As Big Ben struck ten, the BBC’s David Dimbleby announced that Britain was on course for a hung Parliament. The Conservatives were set to lose seats. ‘It dropped on the screen and I thought, “Well it ain’t fucking that.” I burst into laughter because that is my reaction to anything totally catastrophic.’

      No one else was laughing. ‘The whole place was like someone had been murdered,’ another spad recalled. There was a paralysing quiet. ‘Panic looked like the most wonderfully British panic, which was total fucking silence,’ a Downing Street official said. ‘The air just went from the room. It was like a vacuum.’

      Hill and Timothy spoke to Theresa May by phone. The prime minister was at home in her Maidenhead constituency. They agreed to await the results. Inside, May prepared for the worst. She had already had a little cry. After a seven-week campaign which was supposed to be a victory lap, May had taken her party backwards. Over the next eight hours, her expected majority of sixty or more dissolved into a net loss of thirteen seats. Conservative staff fell into a deep depression. The campaign had not been enjoyable but the prospect of victory had kept them going. Now that was gone. ‘I felt like Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption,’ one spad said. ‘I had crawled through a mile of shit and there was supposed to be a boat or money or Morgan Freeman coming to hug me at the end. Instead, it was just a pile of poo, and I was stuck in a pond with the rain pouring down on me.’

      The political implications were as acute as the personal. A prime minister who had seemed impregnably strong was suddenly dangerously weak and fighting for her career. An election called to strengthen Britain’s hand in negotiations on the country’s exit from the European Union – ‘Brexit’ as it was now known to everyone – had left the UK disempowered at a critical moment in her history. May’s two closest aides, who had been as dominant a duopoly as 10 Downing Street has ever seen, saw their power evaporate. Timothy and Hill had helped to create the public being of Theresa May. They were her greatest cheerleaders and defenders. Now they were to be sacrificial lambs for the disaster that was unfolding, their best service to throw themselves to the wolves so that she might escape their jaws.

      It had all been very different on results night a year earlier. Nick Timothy was in a remote Sicilian mountain-top village with his then fiancée Nike Trost on the night of the EU referendum. He was a convinced Brexiteer but did not think Leave would win. Halfway through the night his phone began beeping with messages saying ‘Are you watching?’ Timothy took out his laptop and began live streaming Sky News as the biggest electoral earthquake in modern political history unfolded. His partner, a German citizen, realised what was happening and groaned, ‘Oh my God!’ By dawn it was clear that, after forty-four years, Britain had voted to leave the European Union by a margin of 52 per cent to 48 per cent.

      Over his hotel breakfast, Timothy watched David Cameron resign as prime minister. A German family at the next table lectured him about how bad the result was for Europe. The Italian woman who owned the hotel was more enthusiastic: ‘This is British Brexit, it’s the Italians next!’ As the sun came out Timothy and Trost booked their flights home. He knew this was a defining moment in his life. By then he had already spoken with the two other women in his life: Theresa May and Fiona Hill. For a decade they had discussed how to make the Conservative Party more electable and had quietly positioned May for a tilt at the top. Timothy had a leadership campaign to run, perhaps a country to run. This time he was convinced he would win. This is a play with many actors, but overwhelmingly it is the story of those three people and how they took