If you'd told me a few years ago that in the near future I would read a 600-page book about David Cameron's time as prime minister, partly out of nostalgia for the relatively-good pre-Brexit days, I would have... I don't know how I would have reacted.
I only started properly paying attention to politics for the 2015 election, and had learnt about the Coalition years primarily from leftwing sources explaining how terrible they were, so reading this book, which discusses the Cameron years mostly positively and almost fawningly praises many of the key players, was quite a refreshing reading experience. Indeed, completing it I feel like my political awareness has leveled up, and my opinion of the Conservative party has changed.
The book does a good job of humanizing the Tories, presenting them as people who do believe they are working for the betterment of the country. This should be an obvious point, but even though I've moved on from almost exclusively reading leftwing sources for British politics, my immersion in such material in 2015 had left me with an image of the Conservatives as actively malicious, possibly sociopathic, people who know the harm caused by their policies and revel in it, who are deliberately destroying the British state and impoverishing millions to further enrich the wealthy, causing as much damage as possible before swanning off to a cushy job on the other side of the revolving door. It's a compelling narrative, easy to get behind with our minds which enjoy tales and heroes and villains: the Conservatives do make convincing villains. (There is a Tumblr account called 'Tory MPs Looking Sinister; David Cameron's speech bemoaning our 'passively tolerant society' was quoted by Doctor Doom.)
I now see the Conservatives as horrendously out of touch ideologues with obscene amounts of self-confidence and no real understanding or experience of the lives of ordinary people. But, mostly, ultimately well-meaning.
(A recent example of horrendous out-of-touchness: MPs recently called for an inquiry into food bank usage in the UK, to determine whether the government policy of impoverishing people has led to increased food bank usage since 2010. Conservatives believe the increase is due to food banks being better advertised nowadays, so more people know about them. This is the view taken in this book.)
The 'Cameron at 10' hardback was published in October 2015, the story ending with the 2015 election victory. This paperback edition was rushed out after Cameron's resignation, with two superficial chapters added which briefly summarize the final year of his premiership.
Reading the book in the current political climate is an odd experience, especially since my knowledge of the the Coalition years was really quite limited. It felt like an extended flashback sequence, a world-building infodump, from a fantasy or SF novel, providing context and explanation for the world's current crises, the backstory to our country's dystopian present.
The amount of foreshadowing to our current problems is ridiculous. The chapters on Cameron's dealings with the EU are particularly bad: you couldn't get away with heavy-handed foreshadowing on this scale in fiction.
Before becoming Prime Minister, Cameron pulled Conservative MEPs from the European People's Party to form the European Conservatives and Reformists (these are parties within the European Parliament formed out of alliances between national parties from different countries). The EPP became the largest party in the Parliament - Cameron's decision to pull his MEPs out gave them less influence over EU policy.
EU leaders were frequently annoyed by the British negotiating strategy of demanding what they wanted, remaining inflexible, and storming off with a huff and veto if they didn't get what they wanted. Merkel had exasperated conversations with Cameron explaining that he should come with a flexible negotiating strategy if he wants to achieve something which 28 countries can agree to. #NoDealIsBetterThanABadDeal
When Jean-Claude Juncker was in the running for President of the European Commission, only Cameron and Hungary's proto-fascist Victor Orban voted against him. Juncker allegedly had far less support until Cameron made a major cock up: he had been courting EU leaders to vote against Juncker, but then he publicly stated that Britain would be more likely to vote Leave in the EU referendum if federalist Juncker won. On the continent this was reported as Cameron trying to blackmail EU leaders. No leader wants to give in to blackmail and appear weak, so Cameron's threat backfired and support solidified around Juncker, despite many people's reservations about him.
The Coalition years are defined by austerity. Coming into power, the government embarked on a program of cuts to public services designed to shrink the state and reduce the budget deficit. Emergency services, welfare, defence, local government, legal aid, and more was cut. Public sector workers had a pay cap which, when taking inflation into account, amounted to a real terms pay cut. NHS funding was frozen, meaning a real terms cut when considering the increase in demand. The cuts were accompanied by tax cuts, which were supposed to stimulate economic growth: corporations would have more money to invest in new jobs.
The majority of economists were opposed to the austerity program. Other EU leaders warned him against it: such a program would slow UK growth, and by extension slow EU growth. The Obama administration warned him against it: austerity would slow UK growth, and by extension slow global growth. But team Cameron as determined: they had their plan and would stick to it. They were inspired by Margaret Thatcher and Geoffrey Howe's determination to carry out their free market agenda despite a lot of opposition from economists and other groups at the time.
The economy grew, but not rapidly. The UK had one of the slowest recoveries of developed countries. What's more, the deficit wasn't going down fast enough: tax rises were needed. They chose some particularly regressive tax increases: increasing VAT from 17.5% to 20% (despite promising not to), and introducing the 'Pasty Tax' on hot foods (later revoked due to protests). During this period, living standards were declining, public services were worsening, and...
(a) EU budget contributions were increasing. Since austerity had been sold to the UK public as a necessary evil the country had to endure for economic recovery, the fact that contributions to the EU were increasing and other EU countries (with the exception of Greece) were not undergoing such harsh austerity, gave the impression that the EU was taking advantage of the British recovery effort, holding Britain down from a greater economic future. To many, voting Leave was a protest against austerity, which unfortunately had been erroneously linked to the EU in people's minds.
(b) Immigration increased to record highs, putting further strain on the already stretched public services. The government was happy to deflect blame for worsening public services onto immigrants, contributing to the normalization of anti-immigrant rhetoric, and, since the Conservatives had campaigned saying they would cut immigration to tens of thousands and instead oversaw immigration reaching record highs, gave the impression that the UK had no control over its borders. Ironically, the record immigration levels probably prevented the UK entering an austerity-induced recession: an increased population means more taxpayers and more spenders contributing to the economy.
(c) The Foreign Aid budget increased. Cameron had pledged to reach the G8 foreign aid spending target by the end of the Coalition parliament, and, after witnessing what happened when Clegg went back on very public promises, didn't want to risk looking like they'd abandoned their principles, especially on something that would be judged across the world, not just in the UK. Furthermore, Cameron hoped the 'soft power' of foreign aid would be an adequate substitute for the more expensive 'hard power' of defense spending, which was being cut. Thus the intention was to keep Britain globally influential, but at lower cost. Foreign aid was increasing at the same time as public services back home were being cut: this simple fact was a gift to the far right in the UK.
I was especially surprised by the chapters on the Conservative welfare policies. Here we find peak Conservative out-of-touchness. In 2004, Iain Duncan Smith resigned as party leader and founded a think tank, the Centre for Social Justice (yes, IDS is an SJW cuck), whose research identified five pathways to poverty: family breakdown, failed education, debt, addiction, and welfare dependency. The Conservatives thought that in five years they could only really tackle one of these pathways, so went with Welfare Dependency, seemingly not realising that without tackling the others, breaking the safety net would only make things worse.
(When it was obvious things were getting worse, the Government then went on to scrap to scrap the Child Poverty Act, which had imposed a legal duty on governments to reduce child poverty.)
Well-meaning incompetence is a recurring theme is this book, however the failures of government policy are downplayed. The Conservatives' heroic determination to remake British society against wide condemnation are the focus. It seems to be a mark of strength among Conservative ministers to not let people change your mind once you've committed to an ideological agenda. You stick to the plan and face down opponents, persevere through any troubles and doubts, because in the end you'll be proved right. (I was reminded of J.G. Ballard's description of Margaret Thatcher as a 'public-spirited psychopath'.) The confidence required to do this is, admittedly, quite admirable, but also TERRIFYING.
Gove is a hero for pushing ahead with his education reforms, despite teachers hating them - Gove stuck to his beliefs, kept the faith in the reform agenda, even when everything seemed terrible, even when teachers across the land were protesting against his reforms, because he knew, truly, he knew more than the teachers who had spent their lives working in education. (Gove has no experience of being a teacher: this book states that Gove was an ideal, experienced candidate for Education Secretary when he was appointed, because he had been Shadow Education Secretary in Opposition.)
The Conservative's 2010 election campaign included a promise not to carry out any unnecessary NHS reorganizations. Andrew Lansley's NHS reforms, the creation of NHS England the internal NHS Market, was the largest and most expensive NHS reorganization in history. The key word in the campaign literature was 'unnecessary' - for this was a necessary reorganization. It was pushed through early in the parliament, despite massive opposition from healthcare professionals, because Lansley believed that by the next election, marketization would improve the quality and efficiency of the service to such an extent that all the people speaking out against them now would be proved wrong and become Conservative voters. Now the NHS is in permanent crisis.
The Lib Dems do not come out of this book well (I'm tempted to read Clegg's apologetic memoir 'Between the Extremes' for comparison). During the negotiations over the Coalition agreement, William Hague was shocked by how naive the Lib Dems were, and told his wife after the meetings ended that they 'might well have destroyed the Liberal Party.' Since they were the minority in the Coalition, they obviously had less influence over policy than the Conservatives. The Lib Dems had two policies which they were determined to introduce, the two major changes that would change Britain forever and have them remembered as reformers in the grand tradition of Earl Grey and William Gladstone: electoral reform and House of Lords reform.
The former was watered down from proportional representation to the Alternative Vote referendum, which Clegg himself described as a 'miserable little compromise'. A Labour-Conservative alliance fought the No campaign, which argued on two fronts: that electoral reform would cost money better spent on the NHS and public services, especially in this period of austerity, and that Nick Clegg was a twat (an interesting revelation from the book was that George Osborne offered to pass on the tuition fee increase, because it wasn't an essential reform, but Clegg declined, saying that the appearance of a unified government in this difficult time was more important - after the meeting Osborne told his staff that the Lib Dems were 'mad to let us do this'). An informal part of the Coalition agreement was a link between the Lib Dems House of Lords reform and the Conservative's Boundary Review. When Clegg started agitating about his reform, the Conservatives decided that losing their Boundary Review until the next parliament was a worthwhile sacrifice, and so the two policies which were the raison d'etre for the Lib Dems forming the Coalition, came to nothing.
This is pro-Tory book, so it obviously glosses over other things the Lib Dems did in Parliament. Their main success in parliament was the increase in the tax-free allowance, which the Conservatives ended up taking a lot of the credit for.
As I said before, this book has levelled up my political understanding, and washed away the vestiges of my more juvenile view of the Conservative's as villains. Many are well-meaning. Doubtless many are power hungry more than well-meaning (Boris Johnson). But they are a group of people horrendously isolated from the effects of their policies, many of whom have no real world experience of what they are suddenly in charge of, and are so ideologically committed to an agenda they ignore people who know better than they (Brexit foreshadowing is fucking everywhere). And crucially, they are wrong about a lot (IMHO).
Reading about the Coalition years in detail was an odd experience: these events were in the background to my university and early graduate life, but I was barely cognizant of them. The nostalgia for the Cameron years which somewhat motivated me to read this book was more of a nostalgia for my younger, ignorant and naive self, when I was cheerfully in the uni bubble. You cannot go back to blissful ignorance: there is no return to Eden after eating the Tree of Knowledge. Not that I would actually want to go back to that: I cringe thinking of my ignorance about so many subjects back then, especially politics. As much as cringe is an uncomfortable sensation, I appreciate it shows personal development and growth. Hopefully, in a few years, when my political understanding levels up again, I will cringe while thinking back to my ignorance of today.
