Hammond frozen out - and a manifesto up in flames
THE Election campaign highlighted the simmering frustration of Philip Ha mmon d over his exclusion from the inner circle in Downing Street. This came to a head with the Tory manifesto, after the aides who prepared it decided not to publish a costings document itemising how each policy pledge would be paid for.
For the Chancellor, wedded to steering the economy safely through the turbulence of Brexit, this amounted to economic degeneracy.
How could he credibly argue the Conservatives were fiscally responsible?
But the campaign leadership ruled that publishing the party’s internal calculations could backfire and so they decided not to do it, even though the document existed internally.
‘If we have to prove our fiscal credibility, then we have a problem,’ May’s policy adviser Will Tanner told Hammond. ‘Labour clearly has a problem. We don’t.’
The Chancellor’s frustration had been brewing for weeks.
He had been locked out of the manifesto process, felt he should have had a bigger role in the ‘air war’ media campaign and should have been asked to approve the public spending plans earlier.
Critically, he wanted to make sure the manifesto did not tie his hands at future Budgets.
The problem was he had clashed too many times with May’s chief of staff, Nick Timothy.
The Prime Minister’s view of Hammond was little better than Timothy’s, who disliked the Chancellor, although Mrs May was more careful how she expressed it. The closest she would get to venting her own frustrations would be to raise her eyebrows at the mention of his name in campaign meetings.
No 10 aides regarded Hammond with suspicion and at times contempt for what they saw as a lack of political nous and a tendency to talk too much out of turn.
Timothy didn’t want Hammond to see the full manifesto until his boss was happy with it.
The Chancellor was eventually allowed to examine it, hours before it went to the printers.
With Hammond excluded, Timothy brought Hammond’s deputy, Treasury Minister David Gauke, into the No 10 circle of trust. Gauke was seen by May’s team as loyal and competent.
May, Timothy and co-chief of staff Fiona Hill had called a snap Election, but knew little about how to organise a campaign themselves.
The low point – before the devastation of the result itself – came on May 22, when the Prime Minister used a press conference to scrap her flagship manifesto pledge to reform social care, the so-called ‘dementia tax’, four days after announcing it.
Channel 4’s Michael Crick said May looked ‘weak and wobbly’, not ‘strong and stable’. Another pundit called it a ‘manifesto of chaos’. The proposal made May look mean. But her U-turn made her seem weak – and worse, untrustworthy.
May tried to pretend it was not a U-turn. ‘Nothing has changed,’ the Prime Minister famously said after the volte-face.
The manifesto was a ‘pile of s***’, a member of the Conservative operation says.
According to her speech writer Chris Wilkins: ‘People don’t mind you doing U-turns if it shows you are listening and if you explain what you are doing – so to change the policy and then claim you’re not changing it was devastating to the brand. You are just another politician.’
An MP with 20 years’ Commons experience, May apparently had an instinct for what was happening to her campaign and feared the worst. According to one senior figure: ‘She was very worried. She would take it all on herself, saying, “I’m going to lose this Election.” ’
Springing an Election with no notice was a decision akin to a headteacher at a sleepy primary
No 10 aides regarded him with contempt
school volunteering for a full Ofsted inspection – and then refusing to prepare.
Weeks before she stepped out of No 10 to make her shock snap Election announcement, the PM chaired a meeting of her Cabinet.
One Minister after another told her the manifesto should be as vague as possible. Hammond was among those who advocated a minimalist approach.
As the man often dubbed ‘Theresa May’s brain’, Timothy oversaw the manifesto. He was her chief policy adviser and had total authority over the Downing Street machine. About a week before the Election was announced, Timothy asked Cabinet Office Minister Ben Gummer to take charge of writing the manifesto.
Gummer was deeply unhappy at the prospect of an early Election and told Timothy. He did not believe the large poll lead meant the Tories were unbeatable.
But he accepted Timothy’s offer. The drafting itself was highly secretive. Hammond was ‘frustrated’ at his lack of access and further antagonised by being virtual banned from appearing in the media during the campaign.
Boris Johnson repeatedly demanded access to the full manifesto text. He was told he could not have it – he was not deemed to be trustworthy. ‘No doubt Boris wanted to leak it, so he wasn’t going to see it. No one was going to see it,’ said a source.
Australian Sir Lynton Crosby – who ran the Election campaign – warned that detailed, policy-rich manifestos could be a problem. ‘I hate policy, it only causes problems,’ he would say.
The feedback from research was that the social care policy caused a few alarm bells to ring but May’s team believed they could handle it. Then came the crunch meeting. On Sunday May 14, Gummer drove to meet Timothy and Hill at the Mays’ house in Sonning.
The manifesto was due to go to the printers that Tuesday – ready for the official launch on the Thursday. Always the model of amiable hospitality, Philip May made a pot of tea, produced some biscuits, and then left his wife and her advisers to their meeting at the dining room table.
Gummer pointed out some of the most dangerous areas – including social care. ‘These are the toughies,’ he said. Fiona Hill was particularly nervous about social care.
The good news was that people needing care could keep £100,000 of their wealth, compared to the previous level of £23,000. But it was laborious to explain.
According to some sources, Hill thought it meant £100,000 was the maximum people would pay. It was the opposite.
Gummer argued: ‘Given this is what we know we’re going to do, it’s dishonest to leave it out.’
May decided that giving more detail rather than less was the right thing to do. That meant keeping the care policy in full.
The day before the manifesto was printed, Crosby and fellow Election campaign organiser Lord Gilbert told Timothy they were ‘very concerned’ about the social care plan.
Hill again expressed doubts but Timothy played his trump card: the PM understood the risks and wanted to keep it. Crosby and Gilbert had no answer to that.
Barely had May announced the social care plan than the backlash began.
It was called ‘unspeakable’, ‘heartless’ and worse. The stage was set for her humiliating U-turn four days later.
May understood risks of the dementia tax policy