me.
We agreed to spend the summer setting out policies and ideas: we could only beat the Davis bandwagon if there was real substance in what we were saying. When it came to parliamentary colleagues, no jobs would be offered, no future roles dangled in front of them as inducements for support. And we would be unfailingly polite and correct. This was a complete contrast to the Davis operation, which used a combination of brutal arm-twisting (‘Support the front-runner or your career is over, matey’) and ludicrous promises (by the end, I heard, he had amassed several chancellors and foreign secretaries).
The early campaign was very heavy going. We couldn’t get more MPs to declare their support. None of the newspapers were backing us. And I was worried that my freshness, a central part of my pitch, might go stale.
The first parliamentary hustings in July didn’t go all that well. The star performer was Liam Fox, who spoke forcefully about the need for change in Europe. And a new issue emerged that was to last throughout the contest – drugs. The MP Mark Pritchard was persuaded (by someone in the Davis camp, we were told) to ask one candidate – Ken Clarke – directly, ‘Have you ever taken class-A drugs?’ Naturally the spotlight fell on the rest of us to answer. I declined to do so, and while many colleagues groaned when the question was asked, there probably was some damage done.
The Daily Mail became quite hysterical about it, publishing a full-page editorial: ‘David Cameron, Drugs and the Truth’. I refused to yield, and declined to answer the question about drug use in the past, saying that ‘Everyone is entitled to a private past.’ My stubbornness won some admirers, and proved that I wouldn’t be pushed around.
On Question Time I answered a question about whether I had ever taken drugs as an MP by saying, truthfully, that I had not, because ‘law-makers shouldn’t be law-breakers’. The more difficult question was whether I had ever done so when I was a special adviser, or between being a special adviser and becoming an MP. I simply didn’t answer it. Frankly, I didn’t want to tell a lie by saying no. Stories began circulating that I had avoided the question because drug use among my friends was commonplace and excessive. This was nonsense. But had I smoked the odd joint with Sam’s friends before being elected? Yes. Not at all frequently, but yes.
All in all, it felt as if the campaign was stuck, and outside our small core there were few who thought we could win. But I knew we had one weapon more powerful than those possessed by any other candidate. A clear, powerful and persuasive political message that I was sure the party was ready for: Change to Win.
This oughtn’t to have seemed as radical as it sounded. After all, the essence of conservatism, and central to the success of the party, is that it adapts. Far from being the ones trashing the Conservative brand and the Conservative Party, we were absolutely convinced that we were the ones who could save them.
Our goal – which became my mantra – was a modern, compassionate Conservative Party. Modern, because we needed to look more like the country we aspired to govern. Compassionate, because our politics was about extending opportunity to those who had the least. And Conservative, because we believed that timeless Conservative principles – strong families, personal responsibility, free enterprise – were as important as ever.
The speech I made that June, effectively starting my leadership bid, included a strident defence of families and marriage. Some saw this as rather an old-fashioned note in an otherwise modernising score. I saw it as essential to building a stronger and more compassionate society.
In August 2005, I delivered a comprehensive speech on the right approach to tackling the rise of Islamist extremist terror. I made the case for tougher security measures, including action to deport hate preachers and potential terrorists, and arguing that, if necessary, we would have to leave the European Convention on Human Rights. But the real point of the speech was to make clear that I believed we were involved in an ideological struggle that could last for a generation or more. There was no point trying to tiptoe around what we were up against.
And then there was Europe. I thought, naïvely perhaps, that I had the right formula. In line with my own beliefs, we would be genuine Eurosceptics. Not arguing for Britain to leave the EU altogether, but arguing consistently and cogently for reform. Integration had gone too far. Brussels was too bureaucratic. Britain needed greater protections. Far from rejecting referendums on future treaties, the public should have its say.
Crucially, we had to get away from the ‘doublespeak’ of the past. Margaret Thatcher had railed against Brussels, yet took the country into the Exchange Rate Mechanism. John Major had attacked the single currency, yet said he wanted Britain at ‘the heart of Europe’. The Conservative government had opposed a referendum on the Maastricht Treaty, yet most ministers privately prayed for the Dutch and Danish populations to reject it when they were given the chance in referendums of their own. So, above all, we needed to be clear and consistent.
To me, it followed logically that the Conservatives couldn’t continue to sit as part of the European People’s Party (EPP) group in the European Parliament. The EPP wanted more integration and more political union; the Conservative Party wanted less of both. Yet William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard had all fudged this issue. In my view we had to act and speak in the same way whether we were in London, Brussels or Strasbourg. Thus my pledge to leave the EPP and establish a new centre-right group.
Some have said that this pledge was made purely for opportunistic reasons – to win the support of Conservative backbenchers. Others that I did not fully believe in what I was doing. I totally reject those criticisms. I was in Conservative Central Office when Margaret Thatcher was persuaded to join the EPP. I thought it was wrong at the time, and I never changed my mind. We agreed with the mainly Christian Democrat parties about many things, but not the future direction of Europe. That should have been a deal-breaker right from the start.
But would leaving the EPP do us harm with our allies? This was a stronger argument, and I suspect it was the one that encouraged my predecessors to pull back from making the full break. But our allies needed to know we were serious about reform. And I was convinced that it would be better for all of us if we were outside the EPP, while cooperating with its members on shared endeavours. This indeed turned out to be the case – we established what rapidly became the third-largest group in the European Parliament after the socialists and the EPP: the European Conservatives and Reformists Group.
Undoubtedly the move helped me win support from Eurosceptic MPs. But many of them had few other options. When it came to Europe, Ken Clarke was already the Antichrist to many. And David Davis was the Maastricht whip who had twisted arms and made MPs vote for a treaty they hated. Meanwhile Liam Fox’s bandwagon had limited momentum. So I didn’t need to make pledges on the EPP to win the leadership, or even to win the votes of the bulk of the most committed Eurosceptics. What I said to those MPs was what I believed – and I delivered the promise that I made in full.
But still there wasn’t enough support. It felt as if there were only two people – David Davis and Ken Clarke – in the race. On one occasion in my office just before summer recess, George said I needed to start thinking about packing it in. He was frank, as always: ‘Look, I don’t think you’re going to win. You’ve had a good run, made some good points, put down some strong markers – why not leave it at that for now?’
But I still thought the contest was wide open. I was more certain than ever that the party needed to change, and that change wasn’t being offered by anyone else. Yet I had a sense that for all my hard work, perhaps I was holding something back. Perhaps I was still trying to temper my radical aims, for fear of scaring too many people off. I knew now that the only way I had a hope of winning was by being true to myself, getting everything out there and going for broke on modernisation.
We had £10,000 left in the kitty, and we would blow it all on the launch, at which we would set out in even clearer terms what was on offer and what was at stake. At least then, even if I lost, I’d have nothing to reproach myself for.
Launch day turned out to be a day that changed my life.
Steve and I spent a lot of time thinking and writing,