than party interest. Where cooperation wins out over confrontation. Where compromise, give and take, reasonable, civilised, grown-up behaviour is not a sign of weakness but of strength.’
The tone was meant to be historic, but on rereading it feels a little histrionic. These were unprecedented times, however, and I was trying to rise to them.
One consequence was that those who were disappointed that we hadn’t achieved a majority felt we were rubbing their noses in it. And that I was enjoying myself with the Lib Dems a bit too much.
But while I understand this criticism, overall I don’t regret the Rose Garden performance. The banter and bonhomie did help to set the tone for what we were about to embark on. They showed that Nick and I were confident we could work together and were clear about our task: to confront the economic challenge ahead of us.
Britain – this proud, prudent, economic powerhouse – was in deep economic trouble, and it needed a government that people had confidence in. One that would persist and could weather political storms, one that would give creditors confidence in the country they were being asked to lend to. Forming such a government was part of our solution to the problem.
The urgency of our task had been underlined on our first full day in office, when news emerged that unemployment had hit its highest level since 1994. We started work straight away on the £6 billion of in-year cuts that we had promised and that our coalition partners had now agreed to.
As politicians, we took the lead ourselves, cutting ministers’ pay by 5 per cent and freezing it for five years. We also scrapped ministers’ personal drivers.
We agreed on the importance of cutting taxes for the lowest-paid. So another early action was raising the threshold at which people started paying tax to nearly £7,500 – meaning that nearly a million more would no longer pay any income tax at all.
All this was underpinned by the ‘Coalition Agreement’ and the ‘Coalition Programme for Government’, both hastily compiled but surprisingly comprehensive combinations of our two manifestos, which became our blueprint for government. They stood the test of time.
I didn’t feel we were being constrained by the burdens of office or the addition of the Lib Dems. On the contrary. I felt liberated by office. We were finally doing the things we wanted to do, not just talking about them.
While economic policy would prove the central challenge, it naturally wasn’t the only one. Although I didn’t appreciate at this point quite how much of my time as prime minister would be consumed by foreign and security issues, I was persuaded that we should prepare properly for the work that would need to be done.
One of the big changes to the machinery of government was the inauguration of a National Security Council, which came out of our policy review, chaired by Pauline Neville-Jones, in opposition. The rationale was simple. It no longer made sense to consider foreign policy on its own. The challenges we faced required a response from across government, not just the Foreign Office. Particularly with the rise of threats from what the experts like to call ‘non-state actors’ – basically terrorists – we needed to combine diplomatic, military and counter-extremist thinking.
Afghanistan was the classic example. We could only make progress if we could deal with the poor relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan (Foreign Office), assist in the fight against the Taliban (Ministry of Defence), deal with the flow of drugs from the region (Home Office), improve the country’s potential for economic development (Department for International Development), while all the time working on the vital issue of countering Islamist extremism (Home Office again).
The National Security Council brought all of these departments together, combined with our intelligence services, MI5, SIS and GCHQ, and the armed forces, as represented by the chief of the defence staff. I appointed Peter Ricketts, who was the permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, as the first national security adviser. Coming straight from the FCO, he secured that department’s cooperation with the new arrangements and carried out his new role with huge ability. The NSC is now a vital part of the UK government – and I believe will remain so.
Of course, there was another early national security question to be settled – this one by me alone.
Every PM must decide what set of instructions to send to the commanders of the Trident submarines for use in the event of a nuclear attack on the UK that has rendered other means of communication redundant. These are the so-called ‘letters of last resort’. A senior naval commander comes to your office to brief you on the options and the process. You’re then left alone with a series of alternative letters, and you decide which instructions to give. The others you shred in a giant, industrial-sized shredder which seems to appear in your office that morning.
It is the moment when the full seriousness of your responsibilities as prime minister come home to you. I had spoken with John Major about the approach he had taken, and I had decided on what I believed to be the right course of action. But even so, I sat and stared at the cold words on the 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.