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Chief of Staff
Notes from Downing Street
Gavin Barwell
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Chief of Staff
Notes from Downing Street
Gavin Barwell
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About This Book
BOOK OF THE YEAR, The Times, Guardian and Prospect 'Fascinating and instructive... his decency and pragmatism shine through.' The Times
'C andid, valuable and insightful.' Observer Since the EU referendum of 2016, British politics has witnessed a barrage of crises, resignations and general elections. Theresa May's premiership was the most turbulent of all. In her darkest hour, following the disastrous 2017 election, she turned to Gavin Barwell to help restore her battered authority. He would become her chief of staff for the next two years - a period punctuated by Brexit negotiations, domestic tragedy, and intense political drama.In this gripping insider memoir, Barwell reveals what really went on in the corridors of power - and sheds a vital light on May, the most inscrutable of modern prime ministers. He was by her side when she met Donald Trump, heard about the poisoning of the Skripals in Salisbury, and responded to the Grenfell Tower fire. He was also at the centre of Brexit talks with foreign leaders and MPs from across the house, including Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn and Keir Starmer. Revealing how government operates during times of crisis, this is the definitive record of a momentous episode in Britain's recent political history.
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CHAPTER 1
APPOINTMENT
On the morning of 18 April 2017, Clare Brunton, the civil servant who ran my ministerial office, told me that the prime minister had just announced that she was calling an early general election.
I had served as the member of parliament for Croydon Central for seven years and had been a government minister for three and a half years, first in a succession of roles in the whips’ office and then as minister for housing and planning and minister for London at the Department for Communities and Local Government. I loved both being an MP and being minister for housing. Some people become MPs because they want to be ministers, but I would have been happy just representing the town where I’ve lived for almost all my life. And some ministers get appointed to a role for which they lack any relevant experience or passion – often, a prime minister will know who they want to promote and fit them in, rather than thinking about the gaps and identifying the best people to fill them. Perhaps Theresa May knew that I had worked in the old Department of the Environment on housing policy and that housing was a key issue in my constituency. Or perhaps I was just – not for the first or last time – incredibly lucky. Either way, there can’t have been many people in the country who loved their job more than me.
I had a great relationship with my boss, Sajid Javid, the secretary of state for communities and local government. I worked with a fantastic team of civil servants, who shared our passion for transforming housing policy. The prime minister and her two chiefs of staff were supportive. The department had recently published a seminal white paper, Fixing Our Broken Housing Market, which for the first time acknowledged that we have a housing crisis and made the case that we needed to build more homes to buy and more homes to rent and to reform the planning system and the housing market. If things had turned out differently and I had held my seat, I would have been very happy to be kept in that job, ending the merry-go-round of housing ministers that so frustrates the sector.
The news that the prime minister was calling an early election was a hammer blow. At the 2015 election, I had managed to cling on to my seat by a wafer-thin majority of 165 votes, while similar London seats like Brentford and Isleworth, Ealing Central and Acton, Enfield North and Ilford North were lost to Labour. It was a gruelling campaign that had taken its toll. I was privately resigned to the fact that I was highly likely to lose next time because, like much of outer London, Croydon was changing demographically in a way that favoured Labour. The government’s benefit cap was leading poorer families to move from inner to outer London, the area was becoming more ethnically diverse and home ownership was in decline. Nevertheless, I had hoped that having held on by my fingertips in 2015, I would have five more years as an MP and as a minister. The prime minister’s announcement shattered that illusion. I had supported Theresa May in the leadership election, in part because I thought she was the best candidate to bring the party back together after the bitter experience of the referendum, but also because she had given a clear assurance that she would not call an early election.
I thought briefly about whether I wanted to put myself through another campaign, but at least this would be a short one. In any case, it is not in my nature to quit. I had clung on in 2015 with the help of an incredible group of Conservative councillors and activists in Croydon, who gave up hundreds of hours of their time to help get me re-elected. It was time to ‘get the band back together’. I got on the phone and we assembled at my house that evening.
At first, things went well. We were miles ahead in the national polls. A small number of former Conservatives were staunch Remainers and unwilling to vote for us, but the majority of the Conservative vote was rock-solid and lots of lifelong Labour voters were also saying they intended to switch to us. Privately, senior Labour activists in Croydon told us they expected us to win by about 5,000 votes.
Normally, the national campaign in the weeks before polling day makes little difference – the polls when the election is called tend to be a pretty good predictor of the final result. But in 2017, the publication of the Conservative manifesto transformed the election. Among the proposals were plans to make people with assets of more than £100,000 pay for any care they required in old age, including that provided in their own home. It was quickly branded a ‘dementia tax’ by opponents. The manifesto also proposed scrapping the planned cap on care costs, abolishing the triple lock on the state pension, means-testing winter fuel payments and having a free vote on legalising fox hunting. These plans simultaneously unnerved our elderly supporters and put off many of those lifelong Labour supporters who had planned to vote for us. Theresa was right to want to address inter-generational unfairness. She was also right to think that people with significant assets should contribute more to the cost of their care. But whatever the merits of these policies, announcing detailed proposals in the middle of an election campaign, without any preparatory work to explain the problem she was trying to solve, was a terrible mistake.
It is also the starting point of this story, because Theresa’s struggles over the next two years can be traced back to this manifesto. If these unpopular policies hadn’t been included, she would have won a comfortable majority, leaving her in a stronger position within the Conservative Party and in the Brexit negotiations. Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill would have continued as her co-chiefs of staff, while I would probably have continued as the MP for Croydon Central and, I subsequently learned, would have been made a cabinet minister.
But from the moment the manifesto was published, I was in trouble. I knew I had lost when the exit poll was published at 10 p.m. on polling day. I was driving home after nearly twelve hours knocking on the doors of floating voters. The response had been as good as I could have hoped for – it felt like more people were voting for me than in 2015 – but everything rested on whether the Labour vote increased by even more. The exit poll was far better for Labour than anyone expected, predicting they would gain thirty-four seats and deprive the Conservatives of an overall majority.
When I got home, my wife and my mum tried to cheer me up, suggesting that the exit poll could be wrong or that Croydon Central could buck the national trend. But I knew they were clutching at straws – in recent elections, the exit polls had been very accurate. And if Labour were doing that well nationally, they had to be doing very well in London – no matter how good a local campaign we had run, Croydon Central would be a Labour gain. A little later, a call from my campaign manager and friend Jason Cummings, who was at the count, confirmed my fears. It was obvious as soon as the ballot boxes were opened that we were going to lose by a significant margin. In the end, we got 1,500 more votes than in 2015, but Labour increased their total by 7,000.
I went to the count shortly before the result was due to be declared and delivered a concession speech, congratulating the new MP Sarah Jones and thanking the people of Croydon for giving me the chance to serve them for seven years. I ended by saying that there was only one silver lining, which was that ‘my wife Karen and my three boys will get more of my time that they so richly deserve’. How wrong I was.
I got home at about 6.30 a.m., physically shattered and emotionally drained. I had lost the job I loved in the most public way possible, rejected by the people in my home town. As a result, I would also lose the other job I loved: my role as housing minister. I had no idea what I would do next. All I knew was I really needed some sleep.
I woke up on Friday afternoon to hundreds of messages, some from friends saying how sorry they were and others from journalists asking me to comment on the Conservative campaign. I agreed to do three interviews the next day – BBC Breakfast, Today and an interview with Nick Robinson for an edition of Panorama that would go out a couple of days later.
When I emerged from New Broadcasting House, it was a lovely sunny day and central London was looking its glorious best. I decided to walk back to Victoria and reflect on what to do next, but I’d only gone a short way when my mobile rang. It was Gavin Williamson, the chief whip. After offering his sympathies, he started talking nineteen to the dozen about what a mess the party was in. I wasn’t paying much attention – it didn’t feel like my problem anymore – but then I heard him say something about me becoming chief of staff to the prime minister.
‘What did you just say?’
‘I’ve told her she should make you her chief of staff, but don’t worry – it probably won’t happen.’
After he rang off, I got a call from Julian Smith, one of my best friends in parliament and one of Gavin’s key lieutenants in the whips’ office. When he found out I was in central London, he suggested I come over to his flat near the City. We sat on his terrace and it became clear that, far from being some madcap idea of Gavin’s, making me chief of staff was being actively considered. I then got a text message from the Number 10 switchboard saying that the prime minister wanted to speak to me.
I called my wife first. It was, after all, barely twenty-four hours since I’d stood on stage and promised Karen and the boys that they would see a lot more of me now that I was no longer an MP (when my appointment as chief of staff was announced, some wag tweeted the footage with the message ‘#politicians #promises’). I decided to introduce the idea gently:
‘I’ve got some good news and some bad news.’
‘What’s the good news?’
‘I think somebody is about to offer me a job.’
‘And the bad news?’
‘The job is chief of staff to the prime minister, so it’s going to mean working even longer hours than before.’ I filled her in on the surprise turn the morning had taken.
She immediately gave me her blessing. ‘Politics is what you love and it’s an amazing job – you have to take it. How long would you be doing it for?’
‘I have no idea. It could only be a couple of days – there’ll be a meeting of the parliamentary party early next week and they may want her to stand down. But if I can help her secure her position I could be doing the job for a few years.’
I suspect that she was at least as worried about it lasting for years as it lasting a few days. Politicians talk a lot about public service, and most of those I’ve met mean it – they want to change their local community and the country for the better. But there’s another side to it, too, and here seems the right point to acknowledge it: we also do what we do because we enjoy it and, like any other high-profile job, it comes at some cost to our loved ones. Taking on a job like chief of staff to the prime minister is an act of public service but also a selfish act prioritising career fulfilment over other areas of your life. I am more grateful than I can put into words to Karen for the support she has given me throughout my career – and for the sacrifices she has made in her own career in order to do that. I hope to repay her now that I’m done with active politics.
I called the Number 10 switchboard and was put through to the prime minister, who began by saying how sorry she was that I had lost my seat. Then she told me she was in a bit of a hole. She needed to make some changes at Number 10; Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill would be resigning, and she would like to offer me their job.
Even though I’d been given some advance warning by Gavin and Julian, I was taken aback and didn’t answer immediately. I suspect someone had told her that I had young children and might want to take a break from politics, because she quickly said that she would understand if I didn’t feel able to do it. I reassured her that I would be honoured to accept the role, but that she ought to be aware that I had just recorded an interview with Nick Robinson in which I had made some criticisms of her recent campaign. That didn’t change her mind, so we moved on to the logistics of announcing my appointment – at that point, Nick had agreed to resign but Fi had yet to do so. As the conversation drew to a close, I said, ‘Prime minister, I think you are in a big hole, and I should probably come and see you right now. Are you in Downing Street?’
She was in her constituency home in Sonning, Berkshire. She suggested I get a train to Reading, where her husband, Philip, would pick me up.
I hadn’t asked who had suggested my name and I never found out. In his account of Theresa’s premiership, May At 10, Anthony Seldon attributes the idea to at least three people: the Cabinet Secretary Jeremy Heywood, Gavin Williamson and George Hollingbery. Whoever’s idea it was, the logic was clear. The prime minister needed to rebuild relations with the parliamentary party, so it made sense to pick an ex-MP. It would be helpful to have someone who understood how government worked, so it made sense to pick an ex-minister. And it would also be helpful to have someone with knowledge of the Conservative Party outside parliament. I had worked in Conservative politics all my life, so I ticked all the boxes.
As I sat on the train, I thought about what lay ahead. I didn’t know the precise responsibilities of the role, but I did know I would be replacing two people who had worked with the prime minister for years, not just in Number 10 but at the Home Office and in opposition. I, on the other hand, didn’t know her very well. We’d served together as MPs for seven years, she’d come to campaign with me in Croydon Central a couple of times, I’d had one meeting with her in my time as housing minister and I’d worked in Conservative central office when she was party chairman. But you didn’t see her in the tea room, smoking room or members’ dining room at parliament as much as some other ministers. I needed to build a close relationship with her, and I needed to do it that afternoon. I needed to know why she thought the election had gone so disastrously wrong, and what she wanted to do to fix the situation. And I needed to know her views on pretty much everything; a chief of staff who can’t speak for their boss is no use at all.
How could I possibly build that relationship and find out everything I needed to know in a few hours, particularly with a notoriously private politician who had just been through a bruising campaign and the huge shock of the election result? What could I use as an icebreaker? I sat on the train and came up with what, looking back on it now, was a pretty high-risk strategy. I drew up two lists: three things that Theresa May had done as a politician that had made me proud to be one of her colleagues and three things with which I strongly disagreed.
Philip met me at the station and drove me to their home. George Hollingbery, her parliamentary private secretary, was already there. When I deployed my icebreaker, I detected a slight narrowing of the prime ministerial eyes. ‘What are the three things you disagreed wit...