a referendum on it was redundant.
I gave a speech declaring that a Conservative government would never again transfer power to the EU without the say of the British people, and that any future treaty would be put to a vote. (True to our word, we made this ‘referendum lock’ law in 2011.) In that speech I talked about ‘the steady and unaccountable intrusion of the European Union into almost every aspect of our lives’. I said: ‘We would not rule out a referendum on a wider package of guarantees to protect our democratic decision-making, while remaining, of course, a member of the EU.’
I could feel the pressure on Europe quietly building. The anger at the powers ceded at Maastricht and since was reawakened by the denial of a referendum on Lisbon. The anger was not just coming from the usual suspects and the Eurosceptic press, but from constituents and moderate MPs. I felt it too. I was thinking intensively about the issue, and about how to make this organisation work better for us. And I was clearly stating that a referendum of some sort might be on the cards at some point in the future.
11
There haven’t been many general elections in this country at which voters have shifted en masse from one party to another. The Liberal landslide of 1906, Clement Attlee’s triumph in 1945, Margaret Thatcher’s victory in 1979, the rush to New Labour in 1997 – these are remembered as some of Britain’s great swing elections, whose winning governments went on to change the course of our history.
As 2010 approached, I knew I needed to perform a similar feat. It wouldn’t be enough just to take a few extra constituencies. We would have to win 120 more seats, and retain all our existing ones, if we were to have any hope of a majority. No Conservative had achieved anything like it since Churchill in 1950, and even he fell short of an outright majority and needed another election to return to Downing Street. We had a mountain to climb.
I may have had Everest in front of me, but I had the best sherpas by my side.
Thanks to Andrew Feldman we were going into the election in the strongest financial position in our history.
Stephen Gilbert, the thoughtful and reserved Welshman and campaigning powerhouse, already had our target seats identified, our candidates selected, and the volunteers geared up, ready to fight the ground war.
Andy Coulson had transformed my relationship with the media and translated the theory of modern, compassionate conservatism into something tangible and exciting.
Ed and Kate remained by my side. Gabby was joined by Caroline Preston and Alan ‘Senders’ Sendorek handling the media. Oliver Letwin was still coordinating policy, and Steve still adding his brains and buzz.
Meanwhile, Liz Sugg was poised to turn our plans into practice. At the drop of a hat she could pull together visits, rallies, interviews, drop-ins, walkabouts, anything. Haranguers were kept at bay, staff were all in position, the speech was on the lectern, and there was no danger of me being snapped in front of words like ‘exit’, ‘closing down’ or ‘country’ (there’s always the danger of blocking out the ‘o’ with your head …).
But what was the message we should take to the country? We didn’t have just one answer – we had several. One focused on fixing our broken economy. Another on mending our broken society. A third was to re-emphasise how much the Conservative Party had changed. And on which of those answers should be given priority, the team was split.
George, de facto campaign chief, and I had been making a series of speeches on the dangers of debt and the need for a new economic policy. The theme was clear: the principal task of our government would be an economic rescue mission.
Combining this with our strong attack on Labour was a single, clear message: only by removing a failing Labour government could we restore Britain’s economic fortunes. This was what Andy, running the all-important communications operation, wanted front and centre.
But it was all a bit black-skies. I had been working since 2005 with the famously blue-skies Steve on a sunnier, more optimistic focus – on how we could deliver stronger public services and a fairer, more equal society. We called the organising idea ‘the Big Society’.
I loved it. Conservatism for me is as much about delivering a good society as a strong economy. And building that good society is the responsibility of everyone – government, businesses, communities and individuals – rather than the state alone.
This philosophy – Social Responsibility rather than Labour’s approach of State Control – was summed up by Samantha when we were mulling over these concepts one evening in the garden in Dean. ‘What you’re saying is there is such a thing as society,’ she said, referencing Thatcher’s famous (but often misinterpreted) quote. ‘It’s just not the same thing as the state.’ That summed up the theory perfectly. And in practice it fell into three broad categories.
First: reforming public services. We were absolutely not, whatever our critics alleged, going to dismantle taxpayer-funded public services. But to improve those services we wanted to empower the people who delivered them – trusting teachers to run schools, doctors to run GP surgeries, new elected police and crime commissioners to run police forces, and so on. Bureaucracy and centralised control would be out, local, professional delivery would be in.
This would only deliver better results if at the same time we empowered the people who used those public services, and gave patients, passengers and parents real and meaningful choices, including the ability to take their custom elsewhere. Otherwise we would simply be swapping one monopoly for another.
Just as the Thatcher governments transformed failing state industries into successful private-sector industries, we wanted to bring the same reforming vigour to enable not just the private sector but also charities, social enterprises, individuals, and even cooperatives, or mutuals, to deliver public services. That went right down to local people being able to take over community assets like post offices and pubs.
The second element was about finding new ways to increase opportunity, tackle inequality and reduce poverty.
Since the 1960s, and particularly after 1997, the size of the state had ballooned, spending had surged, more and more power had been centralised, yet the gap between the richest and the poorest had actually increased.
In a number of important ways, the Big State was sapping social responsibility, and as a result exacerbating the very problems it set out to solve. The development of the welfare system was the classic example. Some of the interventions to tackle poverty had had the opposite effect. There were perverse incentives that deterred people from finding work or from bringing children up with two parents.
It took away people’s agency. Drug-addiction programmes, for instance, focused on replacing one addictive substance – heroin – with another – methadone – rather than encouraging addicts to go clean.
We wanted to unleash the power of what we called ‘social entrepreneurs’, usually charities and social enterprises, to tackle some of our deepest problems, from drug addiction to worklessness, from poor housing to run-down communities.
I was inspired by people like Debbie Stedman-Scott. Debbie had come from a tough background, and went to work for the Salvation Army across Britain before setting up an amazing employment charity, Tomorrow’s People, which helped people in the most deprived communities to find and keep a job. I visited it several times.
I was also inspired by Nat Wei, who helped create the Future Leaders programme, which sought the best teachers to lead inner-city schools.
And there was also Helen Newlove, who had campaigned tirelessly for the victims of crime since the murder of her husband Garry in 2007. They were amazing people. The Big Society was about empowering them.
The third element was about a step change in voluntary activity and philanthropy.
We