Kate Fall on life as David Cameron’s ‘gatekeeper’
For 11 years, as David Cameron’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Kate Fall was at the very heart of power. She tells Anna Silverman what really went on behind that famous front door – and what it’s like with a newborn in No 10 (take note, Boris and Carrie)
it was during a chat with her old boss David Cameron and colleague George Osborne when Kate Fall first thought about writing a memoir. Cameron, the former Prime Minister, and Osborne, his Chancellor, were discussing whether they might want to write books on their lives. Fall realised, when a Government disbands, it is always the men who write the books afterwards. ‘I thought, if any woman is going to write a book from the last decade it would obviously be me,’ she says.
It makes sense considering she was the most influential woman in politics for the years Cameron led the Conservative Party from 2005 to 2016. When he became Prime Minister in 2010, he made Fall his Deputy Chief of Staff. She sat right outside his office, earning herself the title of ‘gatekeeper’.
This week, her memoir is released, telling the story of what it was like at the heart of power. And you don’t have to be a political whizz to enjoy it. Working in Number 10 may not sound like the most relatable job, but she talks of familiar workplace scenarios: she felt impostor syndrome at the beginning and found it ‘daunting’ speaking up in meetings full of alpha males. ‘I would often sit around a table and be the only woman,’ she says. ‘With key meetings at 8.30am and 4pm, I wasn’t the only woman, but it was very male dominated… I was quite shy in the early years. I have a bit of a lisp. But I got better at saying what I thought.’
In the book, she writes: ‘Watching closely, I see the men use language to enhance their credibility. George is taken more seriously than me, obviously because he is Chancellor. But he is also a master of “power language”. For example, he doesn’t have an “idea”; he never “suggests”;
he doesn’t ask “how about we say” this or that. George “creates narratives” and then “deploys” them – to which everyone nods approvingly…’
How did she learn to get her own ideas across in those testosterone-filled meetings? ‘Sit up straight and say, “I’ve got something to say and my view is this…”,’ she says. Did other women seem like they were having to adopt this approach, too?
‘Theresa May [Home Secretary at the time] had her own style of delivering. She was always sat up very straight and had a view,’ she adds. ‘You didn’t always feel you had a sort of discourse with her. She would often have a view and then sit quite still. She had a brilliant habit in that she didn’t always feel the need to speak, so sometimes there would be a looming pause in the room.’
Despite Fall lifting the lid on what went on at the heart of Cameron’s operation, he was supportive when she told him she was going to write the memoir. When we meet, she says he hasn’t read it yet, but it’s hard to imagine him disapproving – it reads like a love letter to him, his wife Samantha and his Government. It could have been awkward if it didn’t as Fall is still very close to the Camerons. She lives near them in Notting Hill and sees David as regularly as you would a close friend. She is godmother to their youngest – ‘Flo is adorable,’ she says – and is godmother to their youngest, Florence, who was born in Number 10. As Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds announce they will be expecting a baby while Johnson is in office, Fall says children definitely lift the mood of the house and everyone enjoyed having them while she was there. ‘I can remember at least once when the Cameron childcare fell apart and Florence had to join our 8.30am meeting. She sat on my lap, sucking a mint slowly.’ Fall was there for them when the Camerons lost their severely disabled son, Ivan, who died in 2009. Years later, David told her he wished, in hindsight, he had taken more than a week off work at the time. Fall also describes the Obamas as being ‘kind and caring’ when it came to Ivan’s death. One perk of the job was a coffee she, Samantha and Michelle Obama had together at the American ambassador’s residence. Michelle talked to Samantha about the role of being a leader’s wife and bringing up children in this way. ‘She was really good on boundaries,’ Fall says of the former First
Lady, adding that she advised the Camerons to ‘shut the door and be a family and say, “I need time off ” sometimes’.
The fact the Camerons heeded this advice worked well for Fall, a single mum of two who was balancing the demanding job with childcare. Her children, Olivia and Guy, now 21 and 18, were relatively young at the time. However, she was always on call: at one point in the book she suggests her marriage broke down as a result of the job. Today, however, she says, ‘Politics can put a strain on relationships. But I didn’t think that was the reason why it broke down.’
She also talks of the job taking its toll on family life: missed holidays; missed bedtimes; a missed Rihanna concert she was supposed to take her daughter to. Did the parent guilt creep in? ‘I don’t think any parents ever don’t feel any guilt,’ she says.
Cameron had a nice, conventional family, as did Gordon Brown and Tony Blair before him. Does it matter that Boris Johnson won’t even tell us how many children he’s fathered and has a string of marriages behind him? ‘I think the most important thing about Boris is what he achieves for the country,’ Fall says, before adding, ‘What I found working for David was that, because he was very grounded in a happy marriage and his kids and everything, I do think it helped him keep sane and make the enormously difficult decisions you make as a Prime Minister. Because you need to have a calmness about you and a levelness. For his personality, it meant he wasn’t running around the whole time. He did sit and think and he did shut the door and he did talk to his wife and sort of, you know, give the baby a bottle and I think it gave him perspective.’ She won’t go as far as saying Johnson is missing that perspective, but adds: ‘I would just say that, for David, it definitely helped him.’
She finds Johnson ‘really good company, very funny, clever, an eternal optimist’. She’s known his family since she was a teenager when their fathers worked in the Foreign Office. She knew Cameron from university: they were friendly at Oxford. I ask was nepotism at play when it came to working in his inner circle, but she’s adamant that she and many of his team grew close working together in politics after university.
Her book takes you on a journey through the Cameron years as they grapple with the milestones of the past two decades: the financial crash; the coalition; the question of Europe rumbles in the background. It feels like a thriller building up to a seismic moment you know is unavoidable: Brexit.
The colourful inside scoop about some familiar names is fun, too: Michael Gove regularly eats his breakfast in meetings; Nick Clegg ‘always has a faint air of being downtrodden by the more powerful people in his life – this includes his wife (who he clearly worships and is terrified of in equal measure)’, and Theresa May is ‘stunned and a little giddy’ when appointed Home Secretary.
Fall is proud of the Government she was a part of. As for regrets, considering her boss called the EU referendum and she voted Remain, she does have a few. But she thinks putting the question to the country was the right thing to do. When it comes to the Conservatives’ austerity policy, which has been widely criticised for hitting the poor the hardest and leading to a surge in food banks opening, she says, ‘There are always difficult individual cases and yes, I feel worried when I hear about that. The austerity policy itself, I actually feel a pride in that. People forget that when we arrived in 2010, our economy was really falling off a cliff.’
She’s not eyeing up a route back into politics because people should not be in power long-term, she believes. Besides, she has a seat in the House of Lords and has helped set up a geopolitical practice at a company. That’s not to say she didn’t love having one of the most powerful jobs in the country, and a desk outside the PM’S door. ‘I hope I wasn’t power hungry and it didn’t go to my head,’ she adds.
‘The Gatekeeper’ by Kate Fall (£16.99, HQ)
MICHELLE OBAMA WAS REALLY GOOD ON BOUNDARIES