For the Record. David Cameron
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It is three years since the referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union. Not a day has passed that I haven’t thought about my decision to hold that vote, and the consequences of doing so.
Yet during that time I have barely spoken publicly about it, or about any issues around my premiership. The reason is that I wanted to let my successor get on with the job. It is hard enough being prime minister – let alone one who has the momentous task of delivering Brexit – without your immediate predecessor giving a running commentary.
That silence has inevitably let certain narratives develop, for example about my motivations for holding the referendum and about my departure from Downing Street. There has been analysis of aspects of my premiership – from the campaign in Libya to the schemes that have helped so many people to buy their own home – with which I have disagreed deeply.
But my discomfort at not being able to respond to these things is nothing compared to the pain I have felt at seeing our politics paralysed and our people divided. It has been a bruising time for Britain, and I feel that keenly.
Yet just as I believe it is right for prime ministers to be allowed to get on with their job without interference, I also believe it’s right for former prime ministers to set out what they did and why – and to correct the record where they think it is wrong.
Fortunately, I kept a record during my time in the job. Every month or so, my friend and adviser, the journalist Danny Finkelstein, would come to the flat above 11 Downing Street where I lived with my wife Samantha and our three young children. Danny and I would sit on the sofas in the bright sitting room that overlooked St James’s Park, as he gently quizzed me about recent events.
Those recordings have helped me write this memoir, just as scribbles in a notebook or recordings on a dictaphone have assisted others. I sometimes quote directly from the recordings because they provide such an insight into how I felt at the time. Hearing them back – and writing this book – has helped me to understand how I feel about it all now.
A friend once asked Margaret Thatcher what, if she had her time again, she would do differently. There was a thoughtful pause, then she answered: ‘I think I did pretty well the first time.’ I don’t feel quite the same. When I look back at my career in politics, I do have regrets. Lots. Not every choice we made during our economic programme was correct. There were many things that could have been handled better, like the health reforms. What happened after we prevented Gaddafi slaughtering his people in Benghazi was far from the outcome I’d have liked. The first parliamentary vote on intervention in Syria was a disaster.
And around the EU referendum I have many regrets. From the timing of the vote to the expectations I allowed to build about the renegotiation, there are many things I would do differently. I am very frank about all of that in the pages that follow. I did not fully anticipate the strength of feeling that would be unleashed both during the referendum and afterwards, and I am truly sorry to have seen the country I love so much suffer uncertainty and division in the years sincethen.
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 right approach to take. I believe that, particularly with the Eurozone crisis, the organisation 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 not just fair and not just overdue, but necessary and, I believe, ultimately inevitable. I know others may take a different view, but I couldn’t see a future where Britain didn’t hold a referendum. So many treaties had been agreed, so many powers transferred and so many promises about public votes made and then not fulfilled. With all that was happening in the EU, this could not be sustained.
Of course there are many who welcomed the referendum – and that was reflected in the overwhelming vote for it in Parliament and in the high public turnout when the time came. Far from being a flash in the pan, the referendum was announced more than a year before the 2014 European elections and more than two years before the general election. It was set out clearly in a manifesto that delivered an overall majority in the House of Commons.
But I know there are those who will never forgive me for holding it, or for failing to deliver the outcome – Britain staying in a reformed EU – that I sought. I deeply regret the outcome and accept that my approach failed. The decisions I took contributed to that failure. I failed. But, in my defence, I would make the case, as I think all prime ministers have, that especially when you are in the top job, not doing something, or putting something off, is also a decision.
And that is the thing that stands out for me when I look back over this time: decision-making. A prime minister these days is constantly in contact with their office by email, text and messenger services and is therefore making decisions, large and small, almost by the minute. They also, as I did over the EU referendum, consider the biggest decisions over months, even years. It’s the most difficult, most stressful, yet most rewarding part of the job. In many ways, it is the job (and I almost called this book Decisions for that very reason).
Indeed, so many of Britain’s problems we found when we came to power in 2010 were a result of decisions that had been put off. The government had spent and spent while the deficit and debt were left to grow and grow. Low pay and high taxes had been plugged by an ever increasing benefits system. Educational standards were sliding, but masked by increasingly generous grades. More and more people were going to university, but the system was becoming unsustainable. Big calls on infrastructure were avoided while new superpowers raced ahead. Immigration went up and up but without the control, integration and public consent that is needed to sustain such rapid changes to our society. Businesses were hamstrung by regulation and economic growth was excessively concentrated in the south-east. And yes, as I’ve said, Britain’s unstable position in a changing EU was the biggest can kicked down the longest road.
In order to confront these issues we had to do several bold things. We had to modernise the party and make it electable once again – not with a modest change to our image but a full-blown overhaul of who we were, the issues we addressed, how we conducted ourselves and what we had to say to people in twenty-first-century Britain.
Then we had to do something just as bold: form the first coalition government since the Second World War (unpalatable for many in our party) and make it endure (impossible, according to many commentators). We then had to fix the country’s finances after the worst crash in living memory. At the same time, we were bringing troops home from Afghanistan, while facing down security threats at home and around the globe.
None of these things was inevitable. They happened because we made them happen. Indeed, many things happened – as this book will show – simply because I got a bee in my bonnet about an issue and got the bit between my teeth (and like most modern politicians, mixed my metaphors along the way).
The youth volunteering programme National Citizen Service is something I am often stopped about in the street – and it was an idea I dreamt up many years ago. Technology is changing our world for the better in healthcare, finance, development, transport, the environment and much else besides, and – partly because of the support we gave in government – the UK is in the vanguard of all things ‘tech’. The UK is also leading the world in dementia research and care – and putting it on the global agenda all started when, as an MP, I realised the extent and implications of diseases like Alzheimer’s. Britain is one of the few countries to meet and keep its promise to the poorest in the world by spending 0.7 per cent of its national income on international aid and development. It’s something I’ve always felt passionately about and wouldn’t relent on in government. In fact, these four things – volunteering, tech, dementia and aid – have been my focus outside politics over the last few years.
For all the dissatisfaction