MPs a chance, and sounded out both George Osborne and me about what jobs we most wanted to do. I was in no doubt: I wanted to be the shadow secretary of state for education. It might not have been seen as one of the ‘big jobs’, but for me it stood out above all others. So much depended on it: the life chances of our young people, the future of our country. Our party’s prospects too rested on the answers we came up with on such policy challenges, and I wanted to be one of the people driving them.
But choosing the education role wasn’t, of course, the most important decision I took after the election.
Slightly to my surprise, and certainly to the surprise of many others, I found myself running for the leadership.
Perhaps for others, deciding to run for such an office comes swiftly, and with few doubts. That is not how it happened for me. Everyone said that I was too young. That I had no ministerial experience. And that I had only been in Parliament for four years. I could be a candidate, maybe a credible candidate, but would I be a credible leader? Would I be part of the party’s problems rather than a solution?
During those pizza evenings in Policy Exchange before the election, one of the things our small group of modernisers had discussed was how we might persuade our future leader to act. But nothing we came up with had seemed convincing. We knew, partly from experience with Michael Howard, that it wouldn’t be enough to persuade a new leader to mouth words about modernisation. We needed someone who really believed in it, and embodied it in the way they talked and acted and felt.
Gradually some of the group began to feel that maybe the answer was to try to capture the leadership rather than merely influence it. We didn’t spend a lot of time on what, at that stage, seemed a little presumptuous and some way off. The moment the election was over, however, it all suddenly seemed more real, and more possible. But was it right?
George’s wife Frances was particularly outspoken. The daughter of Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet minister David Howell, she knew the brutality of modern politics, but wasn’t in any doubt. The four of us were having dinner together at our house in North Kensington shortly after the general election when she looked at her husband and me and asked, ‘Well, are you men or are you mice?’
From the moment I really looked at it properly, I thought that I could win. Not because of any special brilliance or powers I possessed; I just saw that all the other potential candidates had flaws that made them eminently beatable.
Ken Clarke had popular appeal, but as the Conservative Party had become a Eurosceptic party, he would find it very hard to win.
Liam Fox, a strong speaker and media performer, was, when you scratched the surface, a pretty unreconstructed Thatcherite. I was fairly sure the party was looking for something else.
That left the favourite, David Davis. He had a great back story, growing up on a council estate, brought up by a single mother and making his own way through business and the Territorial Army to Parliament. He was Conservative aspiration personified. Yet he was another relatively unreconstructed right-winger who would think that the combination of his candidature and another coat of paint would change the party’s fortunes.
I knew this wasn’t the case. Davis wouldn’t be the one to get the Tory car out of the ditch, and I thought the party agreed with me. He had surrounded himself with a rather thuggish crew of former whips from the John Major era, and I rather suspected that a Davis leadership would be like life in a Hobbesian state of nature: ‘nasty, brutish and short’. While he was the front-runner he could win adherents who feared being on the wrong side of him, but the moment people began to suspect he might not win, that fear would go, leaving him a much less formidable candidate.
But I still had doubts. Not so much about getting the job, but about myself and the pressures it would bring, not just on me but also on my family. I was still very young, with much to learn. Could I really do all the different elements of the job? Decisions that would put people’s lives at risk. Coping with the pressure. Prime Minister’s Questions. There were many moments of indecision before the choice was finally made.
My old friend Andrew Feldman played a key role. He told me that I could and should do it. There were also one or two – and it was pretty much one or two – MPs who were similarly convinced. Former SAS officer Andrew Robathan appeared in my office and said that I had to do it. He knew the parliamentary party, and said he was looking at a winning candidate with a winning strategy. Greg Barker, the MP for Bexhill and Battle who had come into the House with me in 2001, was similarly enthusiastic. So was my friend Hugo Swire. Boris was also keen, and generous in coming out for me quite quickly. In a characteristic intervention, he told the newspapers: ‘I hope that David Cameron removes his hat from wherever he has got it, and chucks it firmly in the ring. That hat has got to simultaneously decapitate his competitors and land in the ring.’
Yet in the end it was those closest to me who were the most influential in helping me make up my mind. Most friends were enthusiastic. They could all see that the Tory Party needed a new approach, and they thought I should go for it. The only exception was Michael Gove, who called me one weekend at Dean and pleaded with me not to do it. He was worried about the effect on me, on Samantha and the family. For all the subsequent drama in our relationship, I think he had nothing but the best of intentions in making the call.
My mother and father were nervous. I don’t remember them ever saying ‘Don’t,’ but my dad in particular was not an enthusiast. He was delighted that I was doing the education job, and thought that I should take one thing at a time. But my brother Alex told me to go for it. This meant a lot.
The most important, of course, was Samantha. Just as she had been worried about the effect on our life of me becoming an MP, she was worried about what being leader would mean. She could see why that side of it worried me, but she was also in many ways the ultimate Tory moderniser. It was a crisp spring day in the garden at Dean when she said words to the effect of, ‘What is the point of spending your life in a Tory Party that can’t achieve any of the things that you believe this country needs to do?’ That was what I really needed, and after her words the decision was made. I was running.
To start with, things came together well. George and I met and talked frankly about the situation. He was being encouraged to consider standing, but he thought he was too young, and hadn’t had enough time to develop the sort of story and profile he’d need to succeed as leader if he won. And anyway, his new job as shadow chancellor was a huge challenge. At just thirty-three years old, he was the youngest person in history to hold that role, and he didn’t want to be distracted.
But he did offer to run my campaign. There was no pact, no deal, no agreement about anything, including future jobs; but there was something much stronger. A shared view of the challenge, and an understanding that we would stand together and work together come what may.
The rest of the team was small but professional.
Andrew Feldman was the natural treasurer, and he set about raising the necessary funds, starting with the businessman Phil Harris. My old Carlton boss Michael Green chipped in. We wanted a good range of donors, not to rely too much on any one individual.
Ed Llewellyn, who was working in Sarajevo at the time, took unpaid leave to come and lead my team. Kate Fall, who had worked for Michael Howard, came to work as his deputy. They teamed up with my press officer Gabby Bertin and an events team led by Liz Sugg. All would still be with me when I left Downing Street eleven years later.
Steve Hilton, who had been running his own business after leaving Central Office, and had then gone to Saatchi & Saatchi and M&C Saatchi, would play a key role in working with me to put together the case for change.
Meanwhile, in the House of Commons, I started to sound out MPs. The good news was that the early adopters were just the sort of people I wanted: bright, sane, forward-looking, and popular with other colleagues. The less good news was that there weren’t very many of them. When we first got together in my office in 343 Portcullis House on 13 June there were just fifteen MPs present: Greg Barker, Richard Benyon, John Butterfill, Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, Oliver Letwin, Peter Luff, George Osborne, Andrew