David Cameron: When Rishi asked me to do this job, my instant reaction was to say yes
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When David Cameron visited the Number 10 flat for a discreet drink with Rishi Sunak last month, more than six years after leaving frontline politics, the former prime minister was happy to provide whatever advice that might be helpful.
But there was another question Mr Sunak wanted to ask him.
Lord Cameron said: “He was asking my advice about some things, we were talking about things generally, and I kept sort of getting my coat and saying: ‘Well I must go, I’ve taken up far too much of your time.’ He kept saying, ‘no, no, sit down, there’s something else I want to ask you.’”
When the Prime Minister did get around to asking the question, it took his predecessor by surprise.
But in his first newspaper interview since taking up a peerage to become Foreign Secretary, Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton told The Telegraph: “I was surprised at how my immediate, instant reaction was to want to say yes.”
He took the job – after discussing the offer with his wife, Samantha, their children, and “one or two other people” – partly, he said, because it was Mr Sunak asking. “I respect him, what he’s trying to do,” he added. “It’s such an interesting and difficult time in the world, and I like public service.
“I said to him, this is an enormous personal and big leap to make. But I instinctively wanted to say yes, and I went away to think about it and then did say yes.”
Not everyone he consulted was as delighted as the former prime minister might have been at the prospect of returning to front line politics and international statecraft.
Among the Camerons’ children – Nancy, 19, Florence, 13, and Arthur, 17 – “there was a bit of eye-rolling”. But, he said, “they were generally positive. They know it’s what really interests me and they’ve been very supportive”.
The enormity of the leap for Lord Cameron, who took to working in a luxury hut in his Oxfordshire garden after leaving Number 10 in 2016, is illustrated by a trip he undertook last week encompassing France, Italy, Jordan and Egypt – returning to London late on Thursday for a brief opportunity to do Christmas shopping on Friday.
The trip was designed to discuss ways to increase the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza and to achieve a “sustainable ceasefire” – a long-term cessation of hostilities that Lord Cameron says must involve the removal of Hamas from power in Gaza.
The Telegraph joined the Foreign Secretary in Cairo, where he held talks with Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the Egyptian president, and Sameh Shoukry, the country’s foreign minister, on Thursday.
Mr Sisi is one of a host of foreign leaders with whom Lord Cameron had a pre-existing relationship from his time as prime minister, between 2010 and 2016.
In a series of public remarks during his trip, Lord Cameron sought to increase public pressure on Israel to further relax restrictions on the flow of aid lorries into Gaza.
Privately, he looked to smooth the way for a UN resolution, passed on Friday night, calling for “extended humanitarian pauses and corridors”.
Speaking at the end of the visit, he acknowledged that past aid for Gaza has been used by Hamas, including to help build and operate the vast network of the terror group’s tunnels.
But he insisted: “In the past, some of the economic and other support that went into Gaza, and ordinary trade and commercial trade, there is no doubt that some of those things have been used for tunnelling or dual use goods that could be used for worse things.
“I think that’s an important argument to understand. But it’s a different argument to this argument about aid. What we’re talking about now is food, water, medicine, shelter. Those things really by and large can’t be used for military purposes in any way, and so the interest is to get as much of that aid in as possible.
“Now I accept, absolutely, that Israel will want to check that that’s the case. But, within that constraint, I think it’s important to get more aid in.”
Lord Cameron was flown in an RAF A400M Atlas transport aircraft from Cairo to the coastal city of El Arish, some 30 miles from Gaza, to see the Egyptian Red Crescent’s aid distribution centre.
In El Arish, his armoured convoy sped past vast queues of aid lorries waiting to be given the go-ahead to drive to Gaza.
He said: “They’ve got 700 trucks there, they were saying to me, we could do 200, 300, maybe 400, but at the moment, we’re only able to do a hundred and something because of these restrictions that we face. I absolutely accept that we’ve got to make sure that aid is aid and not anything else. But I think within that constraint a lot more could go in.”
The escalation of Lord Cameron’s rhetoric pressuring Israel both on aid and the number of civilian casualties in Gaza has led to questions about whether the Government’s strong support in the wake of the Oct 7 attacks by Hamas may be waning.
But he said: “I absolutely am a strong supporter of Israel, of its right to exist, its right to defend itself, of its right to deal with Hamas and prevent Hamas from doing this again. We’ve been very consistent about that all the way through, and we’ll continue to be consistent about that.
“But I don’t think that means you can’t make very sensible and strong interventions about aid and about international humanitarian law. If you think about it, ‘sustainable ceasefire’ means a ceasefire that can last, a cessation that can last, when Hamas is no longer there with its tactics of terror and rockets. It’s just a better explanation of what our policy is.”
Lord Cameron’s arrival in Cairo coincided with a visit by Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader, to hold talks with Egyptian mediators.
But the Foreign Secretary warned that the Oct 7 Hamas massacre put the terror group “beyond the pale” when it comes to discussions about Gaza’s future.
“If you don’t have a sustainable ceasefire without Hamas, you’re never going to get a two-state solution. The people who say, ‘immediate ceasefire then a two-state solution’, it’s very hard to work out how you can get from one to the other,” he said. “Because you can’t expect Israel to live next to an organisation that is devoted to its destruction and will carry out things like Oct 7.”
The “malign” influence of Iran is, Lord Cameron suggested, one of his biggest concerns, and directly linked to the existential threat faced by Israel in the form of Hamas and Hezbollah.
He also accused Tehran of being behind the Houthis’ attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea, which has led to companies re-routing shipments and is threatening to cause major disruption to supply chains across Europe.
“Iran is a thoroughly malign influence in the region and in the world – there’s no doubt about that,” he said. “You’ve got the Houthis, you’ve got Hezbollah, you’ve got the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq that have actually been attacking British and American bases, troops.
“And, of course, Hamas. So you’ve got all of these proxies, and I think it’s incredibly important that, first of all, Iran receives an incredibly clear message that this escalation will not be tolerated.
“Second of all, we need to work with our allies to develop a really strong set of deterrent measures against Iran, and it’s important that we do that. The level of danger and insecurity in the world is at an extremely high level compared with previous years and decades and the Iran threat is a part of that picture.”
Lord Cameron said he was “extremely concerned” about the Houthi attacks “because the freedom of shipping and maritime security are incredibly important not just Britain, but actually the whole world”, adding that there needed to be “a very clear warning to the Houthis and to their Iranian backers that we’re not going to tolerate these continued attacks on shipping”.
The Foreign Secretary, however, resists calls by some Conservative MPs to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terror group.
He said: “We’ve sanctioned the IRGC in its entirety. We’ve just put in place – I did last week – a new sanctions approach so we can individually sanction individual members of the IRGC and we’ve done that. The move you’re talking about is not something that either the intelligence agencies or the police are calling for. So I think our stance is the right one.”
The former prime minister also highlighted Russia’s aggression as one of the major threats to world security. In both 2022 and this year, the UK provided more than £2 billion in military support to Ukraine.
Asked whether he would expect that level of support to be repeated next year, Lord Cameron replied: “Yes, and I think we could potentially do better than that. We’re looking at what elements of spending we could also put on a multi-year basis.”
He suggested more could be done to significantly increase the amount of weaponry and equipment being produced by British defence firms seeking to replenish stocks depleted by the war in Ukraine, adding: “We should see the increasing of our stocks both as something that is good for the Ukrainians, and also good for us in what is a more dangerous world.”
The contacts and recognition Lord Cameron acquired in Number 10 are already proving “very helpful” to his current role. In Paris, he had an hour-long meeting with Emmanuel Macron, the French president – a privilege usually only be afforded to a serving leader. The pair first met when Mr Macron was an adviser to Francois Hollande.
One area in which he believes the Foreign Office can be more productive is helping to deliver Mr Sunak’s pledge to “stop the boats”, saying it could “get migration dialogues going with countries where some of their citizens are coming in small boats to Britain, and we should help.”
He added: “Having very visible illegal migration is incredibly destructive to a country’s legal migration and immigration system, and it’s also destructive to people’s view of the ability of politicians and governments to act on their behalf.”
Lord Cameron, who has been deployed by Mr Sunak to smooth Tory backbenchers’ concerns that Government’s illegal migration legislation will fail to stop the boats, said: “It’s the best Bill to get the job done, and I think it’s a mistake to think in terms of ‘ooh, is it full-fat or half-fat?’ It’s designed to deliver the policy.”
He insisted the European Convention on Human Rights “was not the issue” currently preventing deportation flights to Rwanda.
However, with one final hark back to his time as prime minister, he said: “If you’re asking me my view about the ECHR, I will point you to the battle over prisoner votes where the ECHR said I had to do something. I said ‘no I don’t’, and they backed down.”
