The discussion I remember best from that G8 is actually a minor bust-up I caused, which had the side effect of reminding the Americans that we were their closest allies. I mentioned that part of the answer to all the things we had been talking about – the Middle East peace process, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan – was a stronger relationship with Turkey, and harnessing its support as an EU ally as well as a NATO ally.
Turkey. It sent Sarkozy off. Merkel backed Sarkozy, I think because she felt she had to. Obama backed me.
The scenery in Muskoka was incredibly beautiful – pine forests dotted with deep lakes. I have always been an enthusiastic open-water swimmer, and my prime ministerial wild-swimming career would take me – and Liz, who always joined me – from the Shetland Islands to Australia. On day one of my first G8 I started with a swim before breakfast, with two speedboats full of police bobbing around at either end of the lake.
Berlusconi got to hear of my swim and, determined not to be outdone, turned up at one of our first group meetings showing off pictures of him in his twenties standing on the shore of the Mediterranean in swimming trunks. Obama and Merkel looked perplexed, but were polite. ‘Very nice, Silvio,’ everyone was saying.
As we all prepared to leave the G8 for the far more urban setting of the G20, I was told that bad weather had grounded our helicopter, which would mean a three-hour car journey instead. My team immediately pulled some strings to get me a lift with Obama in his more robust helicopter, Marine One.
I was driven to the helipad with his team, and I used the time to explain my reasons for setting a deadline for bringing combat troops out of Afghanistan (which I’ll discuss in the next chapter). The reaction from one of Obama’s advisers was, ‘Oh, Afghanistan – we’re done with that.’
Once we were on board, Obama and I swapped stories about family and work life. He was fascinated by the fact that we were in coalition. At one stage he said, ‘David, if you were an American politician I think you would be on the soft right of the Democrat Party.’ I had been a strong supporter of George Bush Senior and a fan of Ronald Reagan. But with the changes in US politics – and the emphasis on ‘guns, gays and God’ in so much of the Republican Party – I wasn’t sure I could disagree.
In many ways the G20 is the more important of the two gatherings, bringing together the G8 nations with the new and rising giants, China and India. But with the extra size comes more formality and the tiresome reading of prepared speeches. Genuine dialogue, interaction and argument have to find their place on the ‘margins’ of the meeting, where much of the real business is done in bilateral or informal gatherings.
There was one such moment in those margins when Obama, Merkel and I were discussing the handing over of European travel data to the Americans to help in the fight against terrorism, which was being delayed by the fact that a required EU directive was being blocked by the Parliament. Merkel uttered the immortal words to Obama: ‘Well, of course we’ve given the European Parliament far too much power.’
The strength of the G20 has been (and to some extent remains) as a mechanism to agree and process better financial regulation. As with the G8, much of the discussion concerned how we should deal with the financial crisis.
I talked about the importance in our case of getting the budget deficit down, and I found lots of people willing to listen. Britain was blazing something of a trail – and this formed part of the wider debate at the G20, indeed the wider debate across the world, about deficit reduction versus stimulus.
However, the idea that there was some great division about this at the G20 was overblown. The IMF approach was clear: those countries with high budget deficits whose stability looked under threat needed to deal with their deficits; those that could afford stimulus should consider it. The IMF was more focused on trading imbalances between countries, and indeed between regions of the world.
In a meeting that brought together China, Saudi Arabia and Germany on the one hand with their enormous trade and financial surpluses, and the United States, Britain and much of Europe on the other with their significant trade deficits, it was possible to have a serious conversation about the scale of the financial imbalances in the world. To some extent these imbalances lay behind the financial crisis. The huge build-up of financial surpluses in the creditor nations, combined with the long period of low interest rates globally, had led to the ‘search for yield’ in which huge risks were taken.
Regulation of banks had become too lax, and leverage ratios too high (i.e. too much lending allowed against too little capital). This had led to the creation of too many inappropriate financial instruments, like the subprime mortgage bonds. When they turned out to be worth so much less than advertised, the world teetered on the edge of financial collapse. From this it followed that we needed, yes, to improve regulation and to ensure that banks had adequate levels of capital; but we should also deal with the underlying problem: the imbalances.
The regulatory changes that followed were sensible, but what I felt was still missing was the need for the IMF when it came to identifying financial imbalances, and for the WTO, when it came to calling out protectionist moves, to act with more vigour. They should lead the debate, and not be frightened to judge countries that were dragging their feet or heading in the wrong direction.
There was also an opportunity in this forum to build a reputation for Britain as the country that is always championing and facilitating free trade. The French were pushing back. The Indians were defensive. The Americans were saying that the Doha Round, the ongoing attempt to reduce global barriers, wouldn’t benefit them by any significant margin.
But even if we weren’t making the progress I wanted, my idea was to mark us out as the most open, globalised, free-trading, anti-protectionist nation on Earth. I was forming alliances with the Germans, Turks and Mexicans. (The full Doha package never made it, but parts of it were carved out into a Trade Facilitation Agreement that Britain championed and helped to get across the line years later, in 2014.)
Generally the summits had fallen into the ‘yielding results’ category, though there was one moment of farce, involving the colourful and volatile president of Argentina, Cristina Kirchner. Officials were worried that she was going to corner me at a drinks party and harangue me about the Falklands, and warned me that I should be robust about my deep belief in the islanders’ right to self-determination.
But when we came to meet, she didn’t even mention the British territory. ‘How can you be tough on Latin American countries’ budgets when your deficit is so high?’ was her line of attack. The only thing she seemed intent on invading was my personal space. We were locked in this Argentine tango where I kept moving backwards as she got closer and closer.
Gabby had already briefed our lobby pack that I would kick back very hard against Argentina if it raised the future of the Falkland Islands. ‘Would’ became ‘did’ as the press hurried to hit their deadlines, and the next day the Sunday Express splashed with ‘Cameron … Tells Argies: Hands Off Falklands’.
It was one occasion where, following a complete falsehood, neither I nor the press wanted to correct the record. We were genuinely all in it together.
Then, in July 2010, came my first trip to America as prime minister.
I knew that getting my relationship right with Barack Obama was essential. So many of the things I wanted to achieve in foreign policy – from bringing an end to the conflict in Afghanistan to pushing for progress on climate change – would depend on the approach taken by the US.
I had met Obama when he was a senator, and we had got on well. I remember asking him if he thought he was going to win the 2008 presidential election. He said he hoped so, but he thought he had a lot of things to get over – the ‘inexperience thing’, the ‘black thing’, the ‘Muslim thing’. I admired his frankness and candour, and we had built on our bond at the recent G8 and G20.
The protocol – bilaterals, meetings of our teams, press conferences – of that visit all went to plan, and Obama insisted on giving me a personal tour of his garden and the private apartments