LITMIR.BIZ

INTRODUCTION: OUT OF THE ARENA

      At two minutes to ten, my world fell to pieces. With a couple of hundred staffers watching us through the office glass walls, my friend and colleague Fiona read to me what the rest of the country would be told moments later. She had the exit poll result and it said the general election would produce a hung parliament. Our gamble had failed and we had lost our majority. It was a catastrophe.

      The two of us strode through the throngs of volunteers and staffers, and made it through to the back room where the campaign directors were assembled. ‘This is bullshit’, spat Lynton Crosby, the Australian consultant, ‘it’s really wide of the mark.’ Jim Messina, the American data expert, agreed. ‘It’s wrong’, he kept muttering, over and over again. But Mark Textor, Crosby’s business partner and polling expert, sat in stony silence. Stephen Gilbert, the veteran Tory campaigner and a personal friend for many years, took me to one side. ‘Exit polls are never wrong’, he warned, with the solemnity of a doctor declaring a death.

My phone rang. It was Theresa. ‘They’re saying it’s a hung parliament’, she said, barely audibly. I could hear the disappointment and hurt and anger in her voice. There was terror, too. I had seen or heard her cry on a few occasions before, but this was different. She was sobbing. I remember thinking she sounded like a child who wanted to be told everything was just fine. ‘Lynton says the exit poll is wrong’, I told her. ‘We just have to see what happens.’

      But by then I knew what was going to happen. We all did. The early results started to come in quickly. Newcastle, Sunderland. Labour holds, but significant swings to the Tories. The analysts fed the data into their models. ‘You see!’ repeated Messina. ‘The poll’s wrong!’ But as more constituencies declared, the wishful thinking died, and the pattern became clear. We were increasing our vote, but so too were Labour.

      Lynton showed me a text message he had received from Theresa. ‘She’s fucking blaming me!’ he complained. Fiona got into a car and sped to Maidenhead, where Theresa was still awaiting her own constituency result. I was in a daze. Chris Wilkins, the Number Ten strategy director, knocked up a short speech for Theresa to make at her count. I went for a walk around the war room, the open-plan office where the campaign team had worked, and spoke to staffers. One senior party official – another long-time friend – had collapsed and looked as white as a ghost. An ambulance was called and he was whisked away to hospital.

      Chris and I sat alone in the party boardroom as the hours went by. Ben Gummer, the MP for Ipswich and Minister for the Cabinet Office, texted to say he had lost. Other good friends were among the casualties. Chris White, in Warwick and Leamington. Simon Kirby, Brighton Kemptown. Nicola Blackwood, Oxford West and Abingdon. Edward Timpson, Crewe and Nantwich. There was a pathetic cheer from the war room as Amber Rudd clung on to Hastings and Rye. We won new, mainly working-class, constituencies in Mansfield, Middlesbrough and Walsall, but the gains were too few and the losses mounted. Constituencies that CCHQ thought we might win just a few hours earlier – including even Bolsover and Sedgefield – were declared. Labour hold. Labour hold.

Theresa spoke at her count. I watched on television. She was as she was on the phone earlier: teary and shell-shocked. Eventually she returned to CCHQ, and we sat, in awkward silence, around the boardroom table. ‘We will have to resign to give you the space to carry on’, I said. She didn’t really reply. Her mind was fixed on the numbers. ‘We need to talk to the DUP’, she kept saying. ‘We need to keep out Corbyn.’ Her phone kept buzzing with calls and text messages from MPs and others. Eventually, she read one out loud. ‘The donors think you need to go’, she said, staring at Fiona and me.

Riding high

      One year earlier, things had been very different indeed. The referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union had been held in June 2016. David Cameron resigned and, after a short leadership campaign in which her rivals self-immolated, one after another, Theresa May became Prime Minister.

      As she emerged from the car that had taken her from Buckingham Palace to Downing Street, it was difficult to hear anything from where I was standing, waiting, inside Number Ten. The shutters of cameras opened and closed, and helicopters circled above. At last, standing behind the official lectern for the first time, she addressed the country. ‘If you’re from an ordinary working-class family’, she said, ‘life is much harder than many people in Westminster realise … I know you’re working around the clock, I know you’re doing your best, and I know that sometimes life can be a struggle.’ Looking straight down the camera and into millions of living rooms, she promised, ‘the government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few, but by yours.’

      It was the shortest speech I had written for her, but it was by far the highest profile. As she spoke, Downing Street officials and her political team waited inside the Number Ten hallway. The Cabinet Secretary, the late Sir Jeremy Heywood, motioned to me to stand beside him. I was doubled over with anxiety, but as she spoke it became clear there was no need for nerves. The speech was a triumph. Theresa had been on the Conservative frontbench for nearly twenty years, and Home Secretary for the last six. But this was her introduction to the nation, and the public seemed to like what they heard and saw. The speech catapulted her to unprecedented approval ratings, which remained unusually positive all the way until the general election a year later.

The first job was to reshuffle her ministerial team. George Osborne, Cameron’s Chancellor and author of ‘Project Fear’, the negative campaign against Brexit, was sacked. The media were led to believe he had resigned, and when a member of the Downing Street team corrected his version of events, he claimed to be the victim of vicious dirty tricks. Michael Gove, who had backed Boris Johnson’s leadership bid before suddenly launching his own campaign, was also sent to the backbenches. Despite his intellect and talent, Tory MPs were angry about Michael’s perceived treachery, which made it difficult to appoint him to a top job, but Theresa had never liked him and she played the role of executioner with enthusiasm.

      The reshuffle was sweeping, and the media worked out that the Cabinet had more state-school educated ministers than any Conservative government before it. The front page of the Daily Mail hailed the ‘march of the meritocrats’.¹ But it was bloodier than it was intended to be. Stephen Crabb, the Work and Pensions Secretary, resigned after failing to promise allegations about his sex life would not continue. Claire Perry and Anna Soubry refused frontbench roles as

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