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  The approach was generous and front-footed. We were making concessions before discussions had even started – and we were doing so in public.

  I phoned Nick Clegg from our party’s base, now known as Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ). He was keen to progress. He told me his four negotiators, and I named mine. William Hague had morphed from a much-caricatured party leader into a heavy­weight shadow foreign secretary and an indispensable sage in my inner team. He would be joined by George Osborne, Ed Llewellyn and Oliver Letwin, making up the perfect quartet to secure a deal.

  The first talks took place that evening in the Cabinet Office at 70 Whitehall – tantalisingly, tauntingly close to 10 Downing Street, where Gordon Brown was still holding firm. It was a key decision not to include civil servants in the discussions, as we thought that would enable us to get a deal without getting lost in problems and details.

  Ed would call and update me with his usual cloak-and-dagger whispers that I could only half-hear. It turned out the Lib Dem team was pleasantly surprised by our concessions, and our team was pleasantly surprised at their willingness to go for a full coalition.

  From then on there was a permanent pack outside 70 Whitehall: cameras, reporters, protesters, and the odd bemused tourist. The world was watching too. The pound had plummeted that day to a one-year low, and the markets wanted reassurance.

  It was like waiting for a new Pope. When would the next signal come? What colour would the smoke be? Blue and yellow? Red and yellow? I had absolutely no idea.

  The next morning, Saturday, I woke up at our home in North Kensington feeling positive. I weaved through the throng of cameras outside my house and went to buy the papers from the local shop. ‘Squatter Holed Up in No. 10’, said the Sun, depicting Brown as a fifty-nine-year-old man refusing to leave the central London property.

  In an awkward twist, I came face-to-face with Brown and Clegg later that day as we marked the anniversary of VE Day. It was sixty-five years since the veterans lining Whitehall in their berets and bowler hats had liberated Europe and democracy had triumphed. And here the three of us were, the embodiment of democracy in its messiest form. As a testament to the confusion, some of the veterans even greeted me as ‘Prime Minister’.

  Before we were led to the Cenotaph to lay our wreaths, Brown started to engage Clegg about the discussions they had clearly already begun over the telephone. It felt inappropriate. ‘He’s still having a go at me,’ Clegg whispered to me.

  Our own conversation came later in the day. It wouldn’t be our first interaction. Purely by accident, we had a good talk at the opening ceremony of the new Supreme Court in 2009. While Brown and the Queen undertook the formalities, Nick and I talked politics, families and life. He was only three months younger than me, and our lives were very similar. We shared a liberal outlook and an easy manner. I left thinking, what a reasonable, rational, decent guy.

  As we sat down that Saturday night in a dingy room in Admiralty House, one of the government buildings on Whitehall, we discussed how we’d given the press the slip. Underground car park, I said. Switching cars outside the Home Office, he said.

  We went through our two manifestos, and talked about compromises. But the detail was for the negotiators. For us, it was about the bigger picture – and it was about trust. We agreed that we could and should work together. There was a mutual recognition that we would both be judged forever on whether we could make something unprecedented work at a time when our nation needed it most.

  We were both taking a big risk. For me, the risk would be angering those in my party who would not tolerate being in coalition, and might turn against me. But given the history of coalitions for minor parties, he was taking a greater risk.

  ‘If we go for this I’ll make it work,’ I said to him. ‘I’ll make the deal a success, and I’ll make it last.’ I meant it, and I think he could see that.

  Not only were the negotiations going well, but I felt confident in our position. If anyone had won the election, we had. We were the open ones, the democratic ones, the ones who were reading the national mood and responding to the public’s wishes. A full coalition remained the lead option. A confidence and supply deal was just a fallback. That’s why my mood the next day, Sunday, was calm.

  Because I wasn’t in the negotiating team, I tried to do some of the ordinary things I would do on a Sunday to get a sense of normality back into my life. I played tennis. I went shopping. I cooked for Sam and the kids while getting updates from that day’s negotiations.

  The updates were relatively reassuring. Crucially, it seemed the Lib Dems were willing to support a programme of spending cuts, including immediate ones. Without that, it would have been hard to form a stable government with clear purpose. The Budget affects every policy decision, and you have to see eye-to-eye on that. But given their voter base among public-sector workers, particularly in education, this willingness would damage the Lib Dems enormously.

  In the early stages, the decisions for us weren’t as difficult. We dropped our pledge to cut inheritance tax, something we could reluctantly but easily sacrifice. The hard stuff was still to come.

  With things going well, I held a drop-in session for MPs. Some were less than keen on the idea of coalition. A group of backbench Tory MPs who tended to be on the anti-modernising end of the spectrum – I referred to them as ‘the usual suspects’, because you were never surprised if they rejected any move to modernise, or rebelled on votes in Parliament – urged me to go into minority government and call a general election as soon as possible. Others simply said I should let the opposition parties form a rainbow coalition. I was undeterred: a full coalition was the right thing to do.

  But when I met Clegg in my office that evening, something had changed. Though the negotiations were progressing, voting reform remained an obstacle. I had been offering an inquiry, but that wasn’t enough for the Lib Dems, and the teams were now talking about the whole deal only in terms of confidence and supply. Perhaps that was the best we could do. I signed off on the wording of such a deal that Sunday night.

  Then, at 11 p.m. I called Clegg from my Commons office. He’d had a meeting with the prime minister. Brown had made an offer on voting reform – to hold a referendum on implementing the Alternative Vote (AV) system, a sort of halfway house between the current first-past-the-post system and full proportional representation, where voters would rank candidates. AV did avoid the biggest problems with PR. Under it, every constituency would still have an MP, and every MP a constituency. But my party would find it extremely hard to stomach, and so would I. Most importantly, I didn’t think the public wanted it either.

  However, I realised that if we were asking the Lib Dems to make a political move they wouldn’t have imagined possible, we would have to consider things we didn’t imagine possible. Legislating directly for AV, of course not. But a referendum? That might be possible. After all, if one of my primary objections to AV was that the public didn’t want it, a referendum would test that.

  That late-night phone call had been set up by our aides to confirm that a full coalition was off the table, and we were now only looking at confidence and supply. But Clegg and I both went off script. ‘Why are we doing this?’ we asked each other. We agreed that we should try again to go the whole hog. I said I would have another look at an AV referendum, and push my party towards a full coalition.

  By Monday, though, I was utterly dejected. The soaring hopes of the morning before had been trampled, as the Lib Dems signalled their annoyance at the lack of movement on voting reform.

  Worse was to come. When I met Clegg again in Parliament he said that Brown had now offered him a deal that was better than a referendum on AV. This confirmed what I had been hearing from colleagues and press contacts: Labour was throwing everything at staying in power, even talking to the Lib Dems about changing the country’s voting system to AV without asking the country.

  I knew
how hard it would be for Clegg to resist a full coalition and AV. But I also knew that Brown himself remained a huge barrier to a Lib–Lab deal. I appealed to Clegg as a democrat: ‘You can’t go with the guy who’s just been voted out.’ And I appealed to him as a rational human being: ‘You know you can’t work with him, but you know you can work with me.’

  I gathered the shadow ministerial team in my Commons office for the second time that day. We hadn’t met in the nearby Shadow Cabinet Room since before the election, because I said we’d never go in there again. I am not a superstitious person, but we needed all the luck we could get, even if it did force party grandees to perch on chair arms and tables.

  I outlined the Lib Dem proposals for a referendum and a deal. ‘We’ve got to offer something substantial on voting reform,’ I said. ‘And we’ve got to offer a full coalition.’

  As we talked, Brown appeared on the television screen behind us. He said he would step down before the Labour conference in the autumn if that was what it would take for the Lib Dems to agree to a deal. It was a kamikaze mission. He was taking away one of the biggest obstacles to a Lib Dem deal with Labour.

  Now it was clear what was at stake if we didn’t move.

  Still, Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, and Theresa Villiers, shadow transport, said that we shouldn’t go ahead with the Lib Dems. But Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, Theresa May, the shadow work and pensions secretary – even David Mundell, who said he would lose his seat under AV – spoke in favour. Eric Pickles, the Conservative Party chairman, said in his laconic Yorkshire voice, ‘Go for it.’ He was echoed by the education spokesman and former journalist Michael Gove, an intellectual force in my inner team and a close friend. George Osborne agreed, adding that an AV referendum was essential if we were to persuade the Lib Dems to support us.

  The chief whip, Patrick McLoughlin, a former miner and a veteran of the Margaret Thatcher and John Major governments, put it bluntly: ‘We have to live in the real world. Labour and the Lib Dems would be a legitimate government, and would command support in the country, especially with a new leader. We need to grasp this opportunity with both hands.’

  I agreed. And I felt we had enough agreement round the room to proceed.

  But I remained dejected. Brown’s gambit had changed everything. By sacrificing himself, I felt a Lib–Lab coalition was becoming inevitable. And while I was winning round my shadow cabinet over an AV promise, I wasn’t sure I could win over the party. ‘Put the pictures back up on the wall,’ I said as I walked out of my office, where everything had been packed up in bubble wrap, ready to be taken across the road to Downing Street. ‘It’s not going to happen.’

  But even when things looked as hopeless as they did then, I knew I mustn’t stop trying. I went for one final push by paying a visit to our backbenchers’ forum, the 1922 Committee.

  Along with the florist, the hair salon and the shooting gallery, the 22, as it is known, is one of many surprising features of Parliament: a trade-union-style meeting comprising, of all people, Tory MPs. Rather ominously for what we were about to embark on, it was named after the year Tory backbenchers decided to end the Lloyd George-led Liberal–Conservative alliance. It can often be a leader’s toughest audience.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘Brown’s going. And they’re offering a full coalition. And they’ll go all the way on voting reform. The very least we can offer is a referendum on AV. It is the price of power. Are you willing to pay the price?’

  I went home with the party’s backing for what I was contemplating, but I still felt that it wasn’t going to go our way.

  ‘Would you mind if I went on leading the party in opposition?’ I asked Sam. We had been talking about how a rainbow coalition would barely have a majority, and a shambolic government with a short shelf-life would need to be held to account.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘You must carry on.’

  On Tuesday I woke to a text from Ed, telling me to call him. He informed me of the latest – maybe even the final – twist: the talks between Labour and the Lib Dems had broken down. We were back in the game. The negotiators got back to work, this time armed with our final big concession. My mood shifted once again, this time to anticipation. This might actually come off.

  Things moved fast. That afternoon I was in my Commons office thrashing out the details with Clegg. We were still trying to establish how we’d reconcile our parties’ very different approaches to Britain’s nuclear deterrent, Trident. The word then came from the cabinet secretary that Brown wasn’t leaving No. 10 tomorrow, he was going right now.

  Before the sun went down – he hadn’t wanted to leave in the dark – Brown resigned. I watched him addressing the cameras in Downing Street on the TV in my office, knowing that the time had come.

  As I left Parliament for the final time as leader of the opposition, it wasn’t my car waiting outside the Commons to take me to Buckingham Palace, but the prime ministerial Jaguar. ‘You’ve worked so hard,’ Sam said as she and I got in. We were both emotional. I was trying to savour the moment when my phone rang.

  It was Gwen Hoare, my childhood nanny. Now eighty-nine, Gwen remained very much part of the family. ‘How are you getting on, dear?’ she asked. ‘Well,’ I said. ‘I’m actually on my way to see the Queen.’ Sam and I burst out laughing at the wonderful timing of it all.

  I’d been to the palace in the past, but its splendour seemed brighter than ever as I arrived for this moment. I had met the Queen, too, and this time I was as awestruck as ever. However, she put me at ease immediately. Then came the formalities. I said I’d like to form a government, but I wasn’t entirely sure what type of government it would be. I hoped, I added, that it would be a coalition.

  She had seen it all during her fifty-eight-year reign – wars, crises, scandals, new dawns. But she had never seen the sort of five-day delay that had preceded her twelfth prime minister’s entrance to this ceremony of ‘kissing hands’ (no hands are actually kissed). I promised to report back on the true nature of the new government as soon as I could.

  As our car pulled into Downing Street the sky was getting dark, but the street was lit up by camera flashes. A rainbow formed over us – welcoming not a rainbow coalition but the first Conservative-led government for thirteen years, and the first coalition government in seventy years.

  There aren’t many things that make me nervous, but this bank of cameras outside No. 10, the fact that this was No. 10, the fact I was now prime minister, was suddenly overwhelming. But Sam’s presence calmed me. Also calming were the people who were on the street but out of shot: my team.

  There was Ed Llewellyn and his deputy, Kate Fall, who had worked with me at the party in our twenties and joined me when I was an MP campaigning for the leadership. I valued her emotional intelligence and judgement more than anyone’s.

  There was Steve Hilton and his sparring partner Andy Coulson, the former News of the World editor who I’d appointed communications chief three years earlier. A question mark remained over whether he’d join us at No. 10 or move on. I very much hoped he would come.

  There were Liz Sugg and Gabby Bertin, who had got me from A to B, fended off the press and made everything happen over the past five years. Laurence Mann, Kate Marley and Tim Chatwin had served me loyally for much of my leadership, and they were there too.

  I made my way to the microphone stand in front of the famous black door. As on many previous occasions, I was going to deliver my words without notes.

  ‘Compared with a decade ago, this country is more open at home and more compassionate abroad,’ I began, wanting to strike a different, magnanimous tone by paying tribute to the good things Labour had achieved. ‘I think the service our country needs right now is to face up to our really big challenges,’ I went on, bracing people for the measures that were urgently needed to fix the economy. ‘Real change is not what government can do on its own. Real c
hange is when everyone pulls together.’ This was the Big Society, the idea from which all our reforms would flow, being put front and centre of our programme. And I finished with a defining principle: ‘Those who can, should, and those who can’t, we will always help.’ I had come up with this earlier, while talking with Steve. I would end up using it as a guide for much that I tried to do in that building, repeating it in my head like a mantra during those lonely moments when I was forced to make the most difficult decisions about people’s lives.

  Sam and I stepped through the big black door, passing between the civil servants lining the hallway and applauding – the traditional ‘clapping in’ – as we walked through to the prime minister’s office. I felt exhausted, elated – but strangely at ease.

  Not at ease in an entitled, born-to-rule sense. But because there is such a warmth from all the people in that building – and, for me, at least some familiarity. I’d been in No. 10 in my twenties as a young researcher and a special adviser. I had returned in my thirties for briefings on urgent issues as an MP and leader of the opposition. Now I was back, aged forty-three, as the youngest prime minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812.

  But it was time to return to the 1922. As our backbench MPs clustered in the huge committee room, Samantha and I were led in by Patrick McLoughlin. ‘Colleagues, the prime minister,’ he said. There was an eruption of clapping, stamping and cheering.

  Afterwards, I went back to my Commons office to thank the wider team.