Cameron and deja vu
This is an article I've written for The Spectator magazine called 'What does David Cameron really think?'. It was also broadcast on Radio 4 on Saturday, 16 February. From Friday, 22 February it can also be downloaded as a Radio 4 podcast.
He is the longest serving of our major party leaders. He could be prime minister next year. He has had publicity that many a politician would kill for. Yet how many voters can answer a simple question 鈥 what does David Cameron really think?
That is what I have been trying to do for a documentary on 大象传媒 Radio 4. My producer Martin Rosenbaum and I have spoken to those who know Cameron best 鈥 his friends, his colleagues and a few of those who he鈥檚 crossed over the years.
Eighteen months ago we made a programme which asked the same question about the man who then looked set to be the next occupant of 10 Downing Street 鈥 Gordon Brown. Our aim then and now was to examine the values and the influences upon the man who would be Prime Minister rather than their policies. We鈥檝e been struck by how much harder our task has been this time around.
Brown had been at the top of government for 10 years. Cameron has never held office. Brown had just had a vast compendium of his speeches published and, as a young man, had written a book outlining his political philosophy.
Not so Cameron. The non political influences on Brown 鈥 in particular, his father鈥檚 religious teaching and the impact of almost losing his sight 鈥 were already well documented. In comparison, much less is known about how Cameron鈥檚 background shaped him.
The influences on the Tory leader are, for many, summed up by just two photographs. The first shows a young Cameron strutting in tailcoats alongside fellow Old Etonian, Boris Johnson, in a portrait of .
Both are now bidding to prove that association with the braying boys of the Bullingdon Club is not a bar to high office. The second finds Cameron lurking in the shadows on Black Wednesday watching his boss Norman Lamont announce that he was giving up the costly struggle to keep the pound in the ERM.
Some Labour politicians dream of deploying these two politically toxic images to portray Cameron as a privileged young Tory toff who bears some responsibility for the economic humiliation of the Major years. Others fear that this strategy will be no more likely to succeed than Tory attacks on Tony Blair for his membership of CND.
They recognise that, important though they are, those images tell only part of the Cameron story. They do not explain the long political journey he has taken. In 1996 young candidate Cameron rallied his party Conference with a call for a return to a tax-cutting agenda and to fight Labour鈥檚 plans to tame the 鈥淏ritish lion鈥 and turn her into a 鈥渇ederalist pussycat鈥. A decade later Cameron, now as leader, was telling his party to embrace gay marriage, social justice and social responsibility.
There are three other images from the album of influences on David Cameron which help explain that journey. The first is of his wife, Samantha; the second is his severely disabled son, Ivan; the third is the face of defeat. Each contributed to converting him - albeit much later than many of his friends - to the idea of 鈥渕odernising鈥 the Tory party.
Nicholas Boles, one of the earliest disciples of the need for the Tories to change radically, credits Samantha Cameron with 鈥渄ragging鈥 her husband 鈥渢o see the world as she saw it鈥. Boles says she forced the Tory leader to understand that Section 28 (the ban on the 鈥減romotion鈥 of homosexuality in schools) was 鈥渁n attempt to stigmatise a particular group鈥.
The Tory Party had treated Cameron so well, Boles argues, that it took Sam to make him understand other people鈥檚 hatred of it. A surprising role, perhaps, for the daughter of a baronet whose job is selling 拢950 handbags.
It was the birth of their severely disabled child, Ivan, which forced the Camerons to live their lives as many others live theirs - dependent on public services. Night after night spent sleeping on hospital floors changed the man who鈥檇 come from a 鈥渞arefied background鈥 says Ian Birrell who met Cameron as Deputy Editor of the Independent but befriended him as the fellow father of a very disabled child.
The experience did more than make Cameron a small c 鈥渃onservative鈥 when it comes to the funding of the NHS. It also filled him with frustration about its bureaucracy and fuelled his belief that the state needs to create the conditions in which voluntary organisations can thrive.
However, it took the Tory defeat of 2005 to finally turn Cameron from archetypal Tory boy to arch Tory moderniser. Danny Finklestein, the Times columnist, met Cameron when he was head of research at Conservative Central Office in Smith Square.
They were part of a group of Tory modernisers who used to talk politics over pizzas. He says that labelling the Cameroons 鈥渢he Notting Hill set鈥 misses the point. They are, he says, 鈥渢he Smith Square set鈥 whose shared experience of defeat forged their politics and distinguishes them from the Tories who came before.
Opponents would, no doubt, add a fourth image of Cameron - the PR man. All these images may help explain the political journey Cameron has undertaken but they cannot predict its eventual destination.
And that is where friends of Cameron become rather hazy. Faced by choices about governing rather than political positioning they cannot spell out what he would do.
Take just, one example, Europe. It鈥檚 one thing to instruct your party to stop 鈥渙bsessing鈥 about the issue. It鈥檚 quite another to decide whether to betray your activists who believe you are committed to renegotiating Britain鈥檚 relationship with the EU or to pick a long, lonely and, potentially, futile fight with the European leaders you鈥檝e fought so hard to join.
Put this or other choices on tax or climate change or social justice or social responsibility to a member of Team Cameron and they soon reply 鈥淎h but he is a pragmatist鈥. In this sense he is not a moderniser but a tradition-aliser harking back to the days not just before Thatcher but before Heath and 鈥淪elsdon Man鈥.
Douglas Hurd, Cameron's predecessor as MP for Witney, says, with some proprietorial pride, that he is a young man who is learning on the job. Rest assured that between now and the next election Gordon Brown will work hard to flush out the answers that I failed to get.
Whilst making this programme I鈥檝e had an uneasy feeling of d茅j脿 vu. Fourteen years ago I struggled to pin down what another young opposition leader really thought. People said he didn鈥檛 believe very much at all. Pinning down Tony Blair proved so tricky in 1994 that Panorama scrapped its planned profile. It鈥檚 a mistake I vowed not to repeat.
I'm 
Comments
Nick,
I think we all have the same problem assessing Cameron but should we not perhaps look through the other end of the telescope and try to understand the problems he has trying to quantify the differences betwen Tory and Labour. Time and space prevent a long comment but I think Cameron's ie the Tories are still viewed as a non caring party With so many people on benefits it is very hard to formulate policies that would appear neutral without unduly penalising any particular group of voters. What I find amazing is that Labours core voters are seemingly prepared to ignore Blairs unashamed freeloading and subsequent 'nest feathering', Browns
raid on Pensions and his 'Horlicks' of a benefit system and the absolute mess of the NHS,immigration, crime, education and the treatment of the Police our armed forces. If it did not have a 'Labour' tag the country would have had a national strike by now. Could any alternative politiccal part be any more devious, incompetent and as downright dishonest as New Labour. I doubt it and for that reason we should give the Tories or the Liberals the benefit of the doubt and try to get our once great country back to some sort of normality.
We can only ascertain what a politician really thinks if journalists, when interviewing, insist on a 'Yes' or 'No' answer to a question. It should be made clear before the interview that this form of answer would be expected, and if they refuse to agree, the interview should be cancelled. This type of interview should have it's own slot, say on News 24, and should be entitled "The 'Yes' or 'No' interview".
I think the comparisons with Blair could end up hindering him more than anything. It's lovely that he possess the enigmatic qualities that served Blair so well, but the fact is we've had one Blair. Do the public want another?
I see Cameron as attempting to recast conservatism almost as conservationism, not only in terms of the environment but socially and politically as well. In this he's trying to draw the support of a new coalition- libertarian voters who want a less intrusive state, bureaucracy-haters, fiscal conservatives who don't like to give away too much money to government, environmentalists of the type that care more about litter and the local woods than melting ice-caps. He wants to appeal to people who want to leave doors unlocked at night and are worried by the latest trends of youths.
Cameron is probably willing to believe, or say that he believes, anything that will attract voters who operate within those realms. In reality, of course, the world that he's trying to portray can be regained never really existed; it's something that has to be made for the first time. I remain doubtful that Cameron is the man to lead us to it.
He's probably thinking why the country has to waste its time watching Brown dither when we could be getting some really change under a new Tory Government!
Or he could be thinking where to have lunch today, I know I am, thinking I wouldn't mind Italian, probably just have to stick to my tuna mayo sarnies though!
Interesting article but the author really needs to take the 'gloves off' and pin Cameron down.
Perhaps we need to get 'Paxo' on the case? Somebody needs to do it because in all probability Cameron will be the next PM.
What David Cameron really thinks will never be public knowledge. He has shown he will say (or be) anything to become the public's darling and then drop it and move on as soon as another opportunity arrives. Remember the promise to drop the confrontational approach to question time?
I had hoped the Tories would choose a substance politician rather than a Blair clone. I'm also uncomfortable with his use of his disabled child, it seems in contrast to Blair's attempts to keep his youngest out of the public domain.
He will try to keep his policies (detailed ones anyway) out of the public arena until he feels he has a lead that will make them pretty irrelevant. Let's face it Labour could have offered anything in '97 and still have been elected and he hopes to be in a similar position.
I fear as a thinking not tribal voter I will rue the Tories not choosing David Davis as much as I rued John Smith never having made it to PM.
you've said it all in your final paragraph. Just as TB's chief objective was to be not Major, not sleazy, pro education and pronounce voters had just one day to save the NHS, so Cameron's most important job is to be not Brown.
not Brown involves not dithering, not grandstanding on reform agendas, not preaching the state knows best, not wasting tax payers money saving a building society, not taking trips to CHina and India and returning without a single order for British businesses, not building an even larger client state.
he'd get my vote any day just for not being Brown.
Personally, I'd rather have a leader that has learnt through life than a leader that has learnt nothing since childhood.
We currently have a Prime Minister that treats the electorate no differently to the students when he was Rector at university. Taxes are punitive, legislation is repressive, there is nothing but the authority for the state.
Or potentially a Prime Minister that sees the world as an eminently more complex place and yet maintains the hope and optimism and wants to put trust in the people he serves.
Finally, what would he do as Prime Minister? Well, we'll have to wait and see, everytime he talks policy, the government steals it and makes a total mess of it.
Tom - who knows. What they probably don't want is another Gordon, or even the same Gordon again.
In 97, Tony Blair was swept into power by a nation sick of the Major government and with a huge body of voters who had known nothing but Conservatives. I can't help but think the same will happen again, but in reverse.
Having had some personal experience of the early-90s vintage Bullingdon club and some of their far from salubrious off shoots, I can only hope that the journey you describe has been a genuine one not a story spun to lure disaffected centralist voters. Whilst there is no doubt that the current Labour administration has run its course in a way reminiscent of the Tory party in 1997, I hope that the swing of the pendulum doesn't simply retrace the steps of Britain's recent political history. We need momentum for real change, not just a rebranding exercise.
The comparison with Blair is off beam. For one thing, Blair had Brown to provide whatever substance he might have lacked, whereas Cameron has only the vacuous Osborne. But I'm not sure how much he lacked anyway - after all, Blair was taking on the unions and revolutionising the Labour Party's relationship with them, and he was clear that the country had to invest more in health, education, and overseas development. I certainly knew what Blair stood for in the mid-90's, even if I didn't know exactly how he would achieve his objectives. But I have no idea at all what Cameron stands for, and neither it seems does anybody else.
"The second finds Cameron lurking in the shadows on Black Wednesday"
This photo you mean?
what does gordon brown really think? what did tony blair really think?
You can bet if Brown had been at the Treasury during the ERM fiasco he would have been a mile away from any cameras or microphones. In fact with all the economic problems piling up at the minute has anyone seen our esteemed Prime Minister.
Good manners and gentlemanly behaviour are always welcome - even if they make a man sound like Tony Blair.
DC's problem remains with his party - not his MP's who generally also sing nicely - but the average Tory in the street whose views sound rather different from their leader.
Section 28 (the ban on the 鈥減romotion鈥 of homosexuality in schools) was 鈥渁n attempt to stigmatise a particular group".
No it wasn't, and it is sad and appalling that even senior members of the Conservative Party have apparently fallen for this lie. It was simply an attempt to stop some local councils abusing public money for political purposes under the guise of supporting equality.
Let's have a reality check: if the Tories really had been down on gays they had 18 years to do what they liked - and yet this one small section of a local government bill is the only "evidence" ever produced of it.
What really worries me about David Cameron is that he might be able to do what John Dennis suggests - and give full and accurate responses to questions about his real political beliefs in Yes/No answers.
We need more subtlety than that from our leaders, along with a sensible recognition that the truth is often seen in shades of grey rather than in black and white. It's a pity that politicians who are prepared to think more deeply and approach issues laterally don't get anywhere.
As a life-time opponent of the Tory party, I'm happy to instance Oliver Letwin (at his best) as a role model.
he's thinking when will Brown stop dithering and call an election then the real debate can begin...
Cameron is wondering how he will get us out of the Brown bust which will follow the Brown boom.
Nick
Your implication that it is easier to know what makes Gordon Brown tick due to the existence of his past speeches, writings etc is interesting.
I guess his past positioning on a whole range of issues eg nuclear weapons, membership of ERM, income tax and so on - would have provided an accurate forecast of his subsequent behaviour ?
In truth, Brown's driving force is his belief that Labour are the only political party with a moral compass and that anything they need to do to get and stay in power is justified in order to protect the people from the alternative.
The trouble is that this zealous belief in the righteousness of one's own cause means staying in power can become the be all and end all. So it is that we have seen deviousness and lack of integrity routinely employed, ironically, as morally justified means to achieve the desired end.
The danger is that this can degenerate into "The party knows best" which becomes "The state knows best". Opponents (including in one's one party) become "Enemies of the state" and "Enemies of the people". Sound familiar?
I think Brown does have a moral compass and that his 'son of the manse' background plays a big part in this. Unfortunately his obsession with the moral need (duty ?) to hold on to power too often sees him with "Hymns on his lips and lies in his teeth." as the saying goes.
Moral compass? --->Moral maze? ---> Moral hazard? ---> Moral desert?
Blair showed similar zealot tendencies but on a worldwide scale - eg "I do what I believe to be right", then implying that God will be his judge.
Scary stuff. No harm in trying to analyse Cameron but - compared to what ?
For me the similarity is between Cameron and Obama. Both appear thoroughly nice people, who come across well on the T.V. If I met them in a pub I am sure I would enjoy their company and my mother likes them both !
Both want 'change', but I'm still not sure what will be changed and how it will be changed. Some specifics would be useful for the respective electors on both sides of the Atlantic
Nick, To get a handle on David Cameron why not start here:www.barackobama.com/index.php and then visit David Cameron's site.
You see what I'm getting at? Instantly you getObama the man and what he believes in.
With Cameron, on the other hand, you just get British stodge, as you do with visits to the websites of all of our leading politicians.
Just ask Cameron to follow BO's template. And then get Brown, Clegg et all to do similar. Then we might begin to make sense of the people who put themselves forward for high office in Britain today.
As a 26 year old disabled person with cerebral palsy I want to know\why if this was such a life changing experience why does he continue to repeat the same stignatising and negative policies of his Tory predecessors?
For me the similarity is between Cameron and Obama. Both appear thoroughly nice people, who come across well on the T.V. If I met them in a pub I am sure I would enjoy their company and my mother likes them both !
Both want 'change', but I'm still not sure what will be changed and how it will be changed. Some specifics would be useful for the respective electors on both sides of the Atlantic
I think Cameron knows he can't win. I thought he gave a good account of what he believes in in his party conference speech.
The media have an opportunity every month to question him on his views. Yet still this accusation of not standing for anything.
Just come out with Nick either you don't believe what he says and therefore think he's a liar or you aren't asking the right questions in which case you're incompetent.
One must congratulate you Nick. Well analysed indeed.
I also had resourceful parents and as such also voted conservatives, UNTIL 1992, and like Cameron one of my children is severely disabled, and I thank Labour for all the services that he receives.
Nick, you say that Cameron never held office before, but Cameron was Lamont's leading financial adviser, so we know what this Houdini is capable of.
Speaking about the misery of the early 90s, if Cameron was not a hypocrite why did he not insist with John Major to hold a referendum regarding the Maastrict treaty!
Now he wants a referendum regarding a treaty without the obligations of clauses like the ERM, which rendered the vale of Sterling to NIL in a couple of hours thanks to the lies about the strength of the economy! Remember Lamont coming out of No:11 every 15 minutes Nick? All this was happening after 13 years of a Tory Govt. That was the 3rd recession in 13 years and manufactured in UK by Cameron and Co.
Those events were not circumstantial, as Cameron likes to imply, but the result of incompetence on a biblical scale!
Thank you for reminding us where Cameron is coming from Nick!
Well-done Nick. Well done.
Interesting that you found Brown so easy to pin down - but we've now discovered that the man is all mouth and no trousers. I believe Cameron is the opposite.
There is a very obvious pattern to Cameron. He fudges on every issue that gets near him. He fudged the question on his drug use, fudged the Tory position on the EU, fudges on Northern Rock, fudged on Grammar schools and fudges on how to tackle extremists. The man is in opposition and cannot take a principled stand on anything, other than beating up Brown at PMQs. That isn't leadership. Compare Cameron's vacillation to the direct responses given by Obama. The gulf between a man offering principled change and a man who has no other compass than keeping favour with the mood strengths of his party could not be clearer.
Cameron will never reveal what he truly thinks. He is a complete fake. The conservatives have made a big mistake in trying to produce a copy of Blair. We have tried that and it didn't work.
Cameron is just another public school toff. Like all conservatives he is only motivated by greed and self-interest without a clue about the lives of ordainary people.
The last thing the country needs is a return to the Thatcher-Major era which destroyed what remained of British industry and surrendered our sovereignty to Europe.
We don't know much about Cameron at the moment because he hasn't really needed to commit himself to any major political causes. As we approach the election, he will be forced to play his cards and then we can expect to see more of what he stands for and believes in.
In 2001, as a Tory activist, I had to choose between a leader I didn't particularly want, namely Ken Clarke (mainly because of his stance on Europe) and one that I particularly didn't want, namely IDS (because he had helped to destroy the previous Conservative government by rebelling over Maastricht).
Whilst IDS's views on Europe resonate more much more closely with mine, I chose Ken Clarke because, as IDS seems not to have understood, taking us deeply into opposition through party splits over Europe gave Labour the opportunity to be far more gung-ho about our relationship with the EU than Major's government had ever been: and politics cannot be universally relevant if it is oriented around a single issue.
In 2005, as a defeated Conservative parliamentary candidate, I was nearly faced with a similar dilemma - only the prospective leader I particularly didn't want was David Davis, because his hard-line Conservatism had again been soundly beaten in the recent election.
David Cameron was the obvious choice for me very early on because he wasn't either of the others: but anyone who attended his launch for the leadership (as I did), or that 2005 party conference of daily leaders' speeches, could see that DC rapidly became the front-running leadership candidate of choice rather than by default since he recognized that Conservatives need to be proactive in our route back to government.
It is this pragmatism - together with his courageous loyalty to colleagues who occasionally produce regrettably premature policy initiatives - that marks him out as the man of both our party's and our nation's future.
Thus it is hardly surprising that his views on particular issues appear to be opaque if he is asked the wrong questions. Many of us have "danced with dogma" and look back with pride at its economic results but aghast at much of its enduring social consequences.
Now is the time to assess what has been right with the last twenty eight years of Conservative/Labour rule, but also why what has gone wrong has not materialized as its architects expected.
We have a leader who understands that 99% of politicians don't want fewer children to be better equipped for their futures; they don't want the sick to suffer more for longer; and they don't want the vulnerable to feel more afraid and less a part of this amazing country's prosperity.
So David Cameron is not messianic like Blair or mistrusting like Brown. He is the reason why the Tory party, and the country at large, are justified in looking to the future. As an optimist he believes in Britain and trusts the people: now there's a change.
"New Labour", a "modernised" Conservative party. It seems parties are more important than principles. Blair seized the opportunity for self aggrandisement when he realised the Labour party was desperate. Is Cameron doing the same? Fortunately he has a lot to offer, having a backrgound in PR. That is an awfully jolly important business. Makes a terribly awfully jolly important contribution to society.
Many respondents seem to have concentrated so far on what may or may not be accurate criticisms of Gordon Brown. This in itself seems to suggest a certain amount of uncertainty as to what Mr Cameron stands for.
Perhaps his nebulousness is a good thing as far as conservatives are concerned. His best chance of winning the next election is to convince voters they couldn't possibly want to vote Brown in again without suggesting that their only other alternative is a Tory government.
It is easier to get Mr A Voter to think 鈥業鈥檓 not going to vote Labour鈥 than 鈥業鈥檓 going to vote Conservative鈥.
I'd second William Campbell's praise of Oliver Letwin, and I'm also not a conservative.
One of the reasons I find Cameron fascinating is because people like Letwin (and Steve Hilton) are close to him. Despite being on the left, I find myself half hoping they do win the next election because I think Brown is clapped out and useless (not least on things where he needs to be brave, like cliamte change) but worry that if he scrapes in the Tories will go hard to the right again before finsihing off Labour a few years later.
If we are to have a change, I would prefer it to lead to this rather interesting and thoughtful new group of conservatives. If they do go the wrong way and the good talk on environment, children's play, even hoodies (well, sort of on that one) turns out to have been a con, then the coaltion they are building among people like myself will soon abandon them and kick them back out.
The largest problem with Cameron is not the fact that people do not know what he is thinking but more because of the media's obsession with polling data and comments made by washed up former minsters about Labours possible drift Tory polices go unchallenged and unchecked. Cameron's European policy leaves him isolated in Europe, this goes unreported, his economic policy not only has a gaping black hole in it it is fiction, the amount of money he states the government could collect would never be collected off no-doms, this goes unreported. Cameron has no real NHS policy, he has no real police policy, no real education policy, no real welfare policy and no real penal policy every point he makes on these issues is in reaction to a government policy, this goes unreported. If Cameron was elected Britain would have a government with no functioning policy in any area, from defence to the environment and yet this goes unreported!
We seem to have forgotten that we need politicans who can take difficult decsions, not look good on the tv and come out with soundbites.
Surely the important thing is not what cameron stands for, but what the tory party do if it comes to poewer. The two are not necessarily the same
I wish you luck on getting to know who he is, nick - personally I don't think you have a real chance.
Britain can never vote tory again until they have really changed and are willing to understand that it isn't all about big business and big government. David Cameron will not cut duty on petrol, will not cut duty on cigarettes, will not cut duty on booze - he will not get rid of the 'managers' in the NHS, he will not stand up for British interests in Europe. He will, though, allow the gap between the rich and poor to widen. Give tax breaks to those who do not need them and will curtail the minimum wage and give monopolies more power - as all tories want.
Nick I could have saved you a lot of time and effort.
Cameron does not "think" he is merely a political opportunist who will say anything to get into power.
Remember Camerons I will scrap grammar schools followed by Camerons I will not scrap grammar schools.
Cameron has only one thought - to gain power. He uses his family shamelessly a complete contrast to Blair who fought to keep his children away from the ferral press.
At heart Cameron is a far right wing Tory and anyone who doubts that should read the manifesto he wrote for Howards failed election attempt
How can anyone expect us to believe that David Cameron has any kind of understanding of how the other half live? My great garandmother used to say 'A rich sorrow is not a poor sorrow'. The well-off can at least be miserable in comfort, no need to worry over the gas bill. Cameron has had evey priviledge that money can buy. No - it hasn't kept him free from all sorrow - his disabled son must certainly have given rise to the 'why me?' question every parent of a disabled or sick child must ask. But one of us? Don't make me laugh.
As for a choice between New Labour and the Tories - there is none. New Labour have totally discredited themselves to the extent that I'd thought of sending Blair a copy of 'Animal Farm'. Snouts in the trough... Some animals (of all political persuasions) are considerably more equal
than others.
And as to Blair's classless society -I doubt we've moved far since the feudal system. With Ms Toynbee, I believe we're on the downhill slope to an underclass to match that of the US, our apparent role model...
Robert/0240/14-02
I'm an "average Tory in the street". I work in regeneration, but in my spare time I knock on doors and talk to people in a London Borough where Labour have been in charge for more than 20 years.
The biggest problems are on the estates, which were refurbished in 1993-5, courtesy of the Tory Government, with insulation, new heating, double glazing and security. The security's gone now - the Labour Council decided to stop maintaining it - and the drug dealers and criminals are back.
Those are the worst problems I deal with, in my spare time, for free, you see I didn't get elected as a Councillor, but I didn't give up.
The average Tory in the street is likely to be the one volunteering at the charity shop or local hospital and helping people in their free time.
They don't have two heads, or hate their political opponents, we share their goals - better healthcare and education, safer streets and national security - we just disagree about how to do it.
Your post dismays me, but then I've only ever seen a socialist spit at an opponent, never a Tory.
The fact is we now live in a social democratic Britain and Cameron has to change the Tories to become akin to Europe's liberally minded, high spending Christian Democrats if he is to win next time. Old-time Conservatism has been defeated and will never be seen again.