To mark the tenth anniversary of David Cameron's Bloomberg speech, Dr Karl Pike considers the 'pressures' Cameron faced, the consequences of his commitment to hold an In-Out referendum, and the importance of good judgement in government.
It’s a decade on from David Cameron making his ‘Bloomberg speech’, so named because it was at the Bloomberg office in London where – on the 23rd January 2013 – Cameron committed to a policy of renegotiating the UK’s membership of the EU, followed by an in/out referendum in the next Conservative party manifesto.
Cameron won a majority at the 2015 general election, on that manifesto, and duly commenced his renegotiation and referendum strategy. The renegotiation he achieved – while significant to the then prime minister and his team – was judged underwhelming and swiftly forgotten in the referendum campaign that followed. When ‘Leave’ won the referendum, Cameron announced his resignation as prime minister – a little over a year after winning a majority, and three and a half years after the Bloomberg speech.
Two general elections and four Conservative prime ministers have followed since Cameron left Number 10. ‘Brexit, ‘Remain’, and ‘Leave’ became dominant terms in Britain’s political lexicon after 2016. The consequences of Cameron’s decision – and the vote to leave the EU – have shaped British politics ever since, and continue to be felt in different ways. Amid much political turbulence during these years, Cameron memes have occasionally been shared: the photo of the former PM in his memoir-writing ‘hut’, and the infamous 2015 election tweet about avoiding ‘chaos’ with Ed Miliband.
As well as the memes, there is a popular topic to return to about Cameron’s decision announced at Bloomberg: why did he do it?
Connected to that are some popular narratives which have appeared in memoirs and accounts of the Cameron premiership. His former communications chief, Craig Oliver, offers a version of what I call the ‘inevitability thesis’ in his book Unleashing Demons. It’s been quite common to see people claim Cameron had little choice but to call a referendum, or that he did so because of an obvious external ‘cause’ that seems to leave little room for judgement.
It's certainly true that there are some well-known ‘pressures’ that Cameron faced as prime minister when he reached his decision. In an article for the Journal of Political Ideologies last year, I ran through them. There are, broadly, three:
All three relate to one another and all have particular pressure points to refer to.
What I was interested in when writing the article, though, was the jump made in the minds of many observers, commentators and academics between the existence of these ‘pressures’ and the decision to have a referendum. All politicians act within a context of multiple pressures. What’s really interesting, I think, is how they perceive those pressures, and the beliefs they hold about how to manage them, and act. George Osborne, Cameron’s friend and Chancellor, was aware of the same pressures, but advised against holding a referendum. It comes down to judgement.
This is where more ‘interpretive’ philosophy really helps – for instance, the work of people like Mary Midgley, Charles Taylor, and Richard Rorty (I cite all three, and others, in the article). Cameron’s judgement was affected by his perceptions and beliefs about those pressures listed above, and also by his ideology: his conservatism.
Cameron’s conservatism undoubtedly featured a Euroscepticism which in the past – and he doesn’t appear to note the irony of this in his memoir – had motivated jibes at the EU and a distancing from it as a political project. But – in another recognisable conservative tradition – Cameron also viewed Britain’s membership as part of what had become its economic and social background, and integral to its foreign policy. For him, it was a matter of reforming to conserve: some small changes to the UK’s relationship were required to conserve the UK’s role within the EU, one that (in Cameron’s view) clearly brought benefits.
This may seem paradoxical – surely the huge and obvious risk was that a referendum could be lost? If you want to conserve, why not try to reform, but maintain the position of not having a referendum? That, indeed, would have been the better way to achieve Cameron’s objective. But of course, we’re dealing with judgement and perception. Cameron thought he would win the referendum, so the risk appeared smaller than it today does, looking back. The main point to reflect upon is that, when David Cameron arrived at Bloomberg and made his speech, he was exercising his judgement and making a choice. Any ‘inevitability’ argument, or a similar style of argument that leaves little or no room for judgement, seems to entirely ignore an essential part of politics, and life.
Dr Karl Pike is a Deputy Director of the Mile End Institute and Lecturer in Public Policy at Queen Mary, University of London.