page, trying to imagine the scenario in which one of our submarine commanders had to open one of my letters.
As I handed over the chosen letters to the officer – letters I prayed would never, ever, have to be opened – one of the envelope’s seals popped open. A call for Pritt Stick and Sellotape was rapidly answered. An absurd moment in such a solemn process.
So what were my perceptions of office as the sun shone on us in those early days?
All in all, I felt we were successfully setting the scene for a long-lasting coalition, and for turning around our economic fortunes.
By the end of the first month Sam and I decided we and the children would move into Downing Street rather than staying in west London, and we brought across the entire contents of our home – bikes, beds, beanbags and, after a few months, our new baby daughter.
When we departed six years later, we left some of the furniture behind. This included an IKEA kitchen cabinet which I had assembled in the days just after Florence had been born. Nick Clegg had needed to see me, and found me in the kitchen surrounded by pages of instructions, wooden panels, nuts, bolts and screws. He immediately helped out, and we joked as we assembled the ‘coalition cabinet’. Samantha commended us on our work, but pointed out that the two doors did not quite align with each other.
For me, living in Downing Street was perfect. Whether I was upstairs in the flat or downstairs in the office, I was never far from my two enormous responsibilities, to my family and to the country.
13
Within minutes of arriving at the Renaissance palace in Rome that was Silvio Berlusconi’s official residence, I was in his bedroom. The Italian prime minister was showing me an ancient two-way mirror. ‘They didn’t have porn channels in the fifteenth century,’ he explained.
During your first few weeks and months as prime minister, you must begin forging the relationships that will help advance Britain’s interests around the world. Personal bonds are vital; relations between countries really can be enhanced by the rapport between their leaders or jeopardised by the lack of it.
In the digital age, the old ways of doing things – messages passed through ambassadors or fixed times for formal telephone calls – are being augmented with new methods. I had a pretty regular text relationship with the Dutch and Swedish prime ministers and the crown prince of UAE, for instance, and I also exchanged communications with the Australian and New Zealand prime ministers.
But the traditional methods, including phone calls, formal diplomatic visits and international summits, do still matter. I had spent years laying the groundwork for these relationships. However, the amount of time I had to devote to foreign affairs as PM still surprised me. We once did a calculation which showed that a third of my time was spent on trips overseas, foreign policy meetings, hosting foreign leaders and National Security Council meetings.
My approach to foreign policy began with what I suppose might be called a patriot’s view of British history: not one that ignored its flaws, but nevertheless one that felt great pride in our role and contribution. I didn’t accept the idea that Britain was facing inevitable relative decline. Previous predictions of our demise in the 1960s and 70s had been defied by the economic success of the Thatcher years, with their global exports of privatisation, shareholder capitalism and the rule of law.
It saddened me to see some commentators talk about an inexorable waning of our influence. I understood that with the rise of India and China power was moving south and east, but I didn’t accept that Britain couldn’t forge its own important role in the world.
We still had some great advantages: our time zone placing us between Asia and the Americas, English as the global language, our universities and science base, expertise in aid and diplomacy, widely respected armed forces and an unequalled network of global alliances, including NATO, the EU, the Commonwealth, the G8, G20, IMF, and permanent membership of the UN Security Council.
The Labour governments had had some foreign policy successes. There had been the actions to save Sierra Leone and Kosovo, and Gordon Brown had used the G20 effectively to help coordinate action after the global economic crisis. But at the same time their foreign policy had been disproportionately defined by two relationships: with the US and the EU. Elsewhere, they had closed embassies and downgraded the importance of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Far too many old alliances had been allowed to slide.
It was clear to me that, alongside our economic rescue, reasserting Britain’s global status would be one of our biggest missions in government. In fact, the two were intertwined. Building a stronger economy relied upon the goods and services we sold abroad and the investment we attracted at home. And our global reputation rested upon our ability to fix our economy.
I approached our foreign policy challenges as a ‘liberal conservative’, not a ‘neo-conservative’. While I understood and sympathised with the doctrine of Bush and Blair – that spreading democracy around the world helped peace and prosperity – I felt that their rhetoric and actions didn’t reflect the difficulties of achieving such change. I wanted a foreign policy that was practical, hard-headed and realistic.
My practical approach made me sceptical of the view of some in Whitehall that the job of the politicians was simply to set the overall strategy and leave its implementation to officials. Some of the military top brass were particularly keen on this, and thoroughly disliked it when I interfered in deployments of ships, troops or submarines. But you cannot always separate tactics and strategy: the politicians need to be intricately involved in both.
The hard-headedness came from my belief that we should never be ashamed of using foreign policy to help generate prosperity at home. For too long, the FCO had neglected its economic responsibilities. India was one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, yet we had fallen from their fourth biggest source of imports to their eighteenth in just one decade. We still exported more to Ireland than to the BRICS economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
I saw an opportunity to reposition our diplomatic network as a generator of trade and inward investment. Some sneered at ‘commercial diplomacy’; I made it a key plank of my foreign policy. We had a presence in 196 countries across the world. That was 196 potential shop windows in which to advertise Britain.
The realism was evident in our recognition that democracy wouldn’t take root at the drop of a hat – or bomb. Its components – the rule of law, a fair judiciary, property rights, a free press – take time to embed. This was not a disavowal of military action. Instead, I saw it as a course correction from the excessive interventionism of the New Labour years.
I admired Tony Blair’s passion for trying to solve problems and to intervene in difficult situations. But his foreign-policy actions lacked the consideration of a good driver – too keen to keep his foot on the accelerator and insufficient in his use of either brakes or rear-view mirror. At the same time, what I didn’t want was for the pendulum to swing too far in the other direction and rule out intervention altogether. There are occasions when you have to intervene. The failure to intervene in Bosnia and Rwanda in the 1990s influenced the rush to intervene in Iraq. I didn’t want Iraq to stop us intervening somewhere that it was desperately needed in the future. Every case and conflict is different.
When it came to the ‘special relationship’ with the USA, I had always felt it was special to me personally: I had huge admiration for the United States, loved spending time there, and as a child of the Cold War I was clear that it was our best friend and ally. It seemed obvious that we should want to maintain, and where possible enhance, the special relationship. And I believe that word – ‘special’ – is merited. In my view, the intensity of the partnership between our intelligence services justifies the title on its own, quite aside from the powerful ties of history, language, culture, trade and values.
But it shouldn’t be our only special relationship.