which is properly constituted and completely under his control. It addresses many of the anomalies of the Blair and Brown years, and works well because the PM chairs it, and it meets on the same morning as Cabinet so all the key people are present. It brings together homeland security and overseas intelligence. The intelligence chiefs like it because it brings them into weekly contact with the PM and senior ministers. Cameron likes it because overseas development is part of the structure, enabling him to keep an eye on the Development Secretary with his large and controversial budget. But for all its strengths, he becomes at times disappointed that it doesn’t operate like the White House Situation Room, and he finds it can be dominated by officials and chiefs not willing to engage in open-sided debate.
Within these first few weeks, Cameron emerges as the dominant figure on foreign policy, eclipsing Foreign Secretary Hague, and even on defence, eclipsing Fox. He cannily utilises to the full the opportunities a prime minister possesses – trips, speeches, visits and PMQs – to achieve limelight to advance his agenda. He makes it clear he is not interested in maintaining relationships for the sake of relationships – a blasphemous concept to the Foreign Office – nor is he interested in strategy for the sake of having a strategy, blasphemous to the MoD. He establishes himself rapidly as sans pareil at establishing one-to-one relationships with overseas leaders. He respects Hague, and gives him wide measures of freedom on defined areas, including the Middle East Peace Process and Russia. Relations between Number 10 and the Foreign Office settle into a more harmonious rhythm than for several years, since indeed Major was PM.
Cameron soon shows himself to be more interested in the details of foreign than domestic policy. Like many PMs, he finds it easier dealing with people on his level in other countries than with subordinates in his own. Like many PMs too, he finds himself having to spend much more time than he expects or wants talking to leaders from countries not in the front rank, and considerably more time than he wishes or expects on Europe and on national security. But much of his overseas work fascinates him: it is like being head boy of Britain, protecting its interests and citizens at home and abroad. Hence his obsession in getting Afghanistan right.
Cameron knows he must make two particular visits before going public with his decision. First up is Afghanistan. He flies there on 10 June via Oman, where he boards a military transport aircraft. He had visited Camp Bastion several times as Leader of the Opposition, but this is his first trip to the battle zones of Helmand Province and to Lashkar Gah. It brings home to him that ‘these guys are now here because of me, because of my policies’. On a hospital visit, he talks to British soldiers, and local civilians, as well as nurses and doctors. He addresses 400 British soldiers, some on armoured vehicles, and reads out a special message from the England football manager, Fabio Capello. When flying around Helmand, his helicopter is diverted because of an intelligence intercept that the Taliban are about to fire a surface-to-air missile at a VIP flight. When Tom Fletcher tells him of the danger, ‘He didn’t blink, didn’t miss a beat. He enjoyed a certain amount of black humour!’12
Nick Parker is the senior British officer on the ground in his capacity as the deputy commander of International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), NATO’s forces in Afghanistan. He and the PM speak face-to-face for the first time on 11 June in Camp Bastion: ‘We touch on casualties and I am deliberately hard,’ Parker writes in his diary. ‘Casualties will get worse. You have to live with it. Our job is to keep going and retain the initiative.’ Cameron doesn’t flinch. He is frank about the political pressures he is under at home, the difficulty of finding more money for resources, and his scepticism of success in Sangin. Parker concludes, ‘Very impressive … he’s quickly brought a far greater sense of purpose. First impression, a good leader and quick to understand.’13 Cameron presses Parker and fellow officers on the ground hard about the need for an end date. He is told that if the British forces are able to concentrate their efforts on a small part of Helmand, where they can show clear progress, then it is entirely sensible to give a date for withdrawal. Cameron has heard what he needs to hear. On the return flight, Liz Sugg notes that he’s much more silent and thoughtful than usual. ‘The visit has made a big impression on him,’ she says.14
The second journey Cameron has to make is across the Atlantic to see Obama, his first meeting with him as prime minister. He wants to make a good impression, and is fully aware that he had failed to strike up the right note with the president on their meeting in London when Leader of the Opposition. Reports that Obama thought Cameron a ‘lightweight’ at their encounter in July 2008, which Obama’s team denied, had caused embarrassment.15 In early June 2010, Obama had sacked Stanley McChrystal, commander of ISAF forces, following an article in Rolling Stone magazine quoting McChrystal criticising Obama.16 David Petraeus, who’d overseen the ‘surge’ strategy in Iraq in 2007, is the new man.
Obama had spoken by phone to Cameron about the transition: but the PM doesn’t give any hint that he thinks the president has made the wrong call. It is suspected Obama is being weak in standing up to his military. It is thought that because he is battling to get his health-care reforms through Congress, he doesn’t wish to be accused of being anti-military or unpatriotic by the Republicans at the very moment when his domestic flagship is on the line. Number 10 suspect that deep down Obama knows that the surge will not work in the long term but he’s not prepared to say so for political reasons. Another complicating factor is BP. In April, the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon drilling rig had an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, causing the biggest accidental oil leak in the history of the petroleum industry. The White House made their fury well known. Cameron is on the back foot over this, conscious of how American hostility could impact on the share price of BP, damaging the British economy at a vulnerable time. It is a delicate situation.
Cameron boards the plane for the G8 at Muskoka in Ontario on Friday 25 June. He is clear in his own mind that British forces will be out of Afghanistan by December 2014. He has rejected utterly the argument from the military to ‘just give us a few more years and we’ll sort it out’. In the weeks following the Chequers summit, Richards has continued to argue success is the only option: ‘Whatever it takes, whatever it costs. We’re the professionals. Leave it to us in the military; you can’t set timelines on something like this.’ Some in the military are anxious to prove to their American counterparts that the British can succeed in Afghanistan where they had failed, so the US military believed, in Iraq.
Cameron is clear he will be the prime minister who will bring the UK troops home. A further four years seems to him a sensible timeframe. Part of him would like to leave earlier, but he needs to keep in step with the US administration, who are insistent that the drawdown be managed and orderly. He is determined that Afghan security forces be sufficiently well trained to continue after NATO has left, to maximise the chances of being able to say that the war has been worthwhile, and that it allowed the country to manage its own security. But he is aware that some are saying this is a pipe dream, and that the Afghan army, without an air force, without the logistics, without the expertise or willpower, will never succeed where the British and NATO have failed. He would ideally like to persuade Obama to engage in political negotiations with the Taliban or their associates, but he knows this is a bridge too far in Washington.
Cameron is unusually quiet on the flight to Canada. His team have chartered an entire plane for the journey. ‘This is serious. In Opposition, it was just four or five of us on trips bundled aboard a BA flight,’ one of his staff observes. Cameron has already established a rhythm. He usually sits in seat 1B, with space for boxes by the window, and 1C free for him to call up whoever he wants to talk to. He clears the domestic papers in his box, and then at last his brief for the visit, highlighting particular sections. He wants to command the detail. He has been PM for less than seven weeks: Afghanistan is his biggest personal decision to date. He is 95% clear what to do when the plane takes off and his team have squared with the White House that Britain will be bringing its troops home by the end of 2014: he has merely to decide in his mind when to tell the world and how to present it. He takes these decisions alone, relying on his instincts. The plane touches down at Ottawa’s Macdonald–Cartier