The real father of Cameronism

24 June 2006

Part of the problem lies in his decency, a word which all his friends use to describe him. He lacks the skills of the classic political serpent, which was why he was caught out in the Neil Hamilton cash-for-questions scandal. Mr Willetts, a junior whip, made the schoolboy error of writing on a memo that the party should ‘exploit the good Tory majority’ on an investigating committee. Every Tory would have thought it, but no self-respecting charlatan would commit such thoughts to paper.

Then last summer he supported David Davis’s leadership bid, amazing those who knew his instincts were closer to those of the Cameron modernisers. Mr Davis was then considered the favourite, and it looked as if Mr Willetts had swapped principles in the hope of power. Privately, he told friends he feared a bunch of public schoolboys would not have the clout to reform the party along the lines he believed necessary — he himself is a product of King Edward VI grammar in Birmingham and believed the Notting Hill Set could not tame the Tory Right. Only a fire-breathing right-winger, he reasoned, could sell the party a loose-left message.

‘It was a kind of Nixon-goes-to-China argument,’ he says. ‘In terms of delivering the kind of change I thought was needed, I thought that someone with David Davis’s authority and credibility on the Right of the party would be the best to deliver it.’

He cheerfully admits he was emphatically wrong and that Mr Cameron has become the perfect vehicle for the message he wanted to put out for so long. ‘David Cameron clearly means it, personally embodies it, conveys it in an attractive way. He does it, doesn’t just say it.’ And does it feel odd being junior to Mr Letwin? ‘Well, he is in charge of policy. I was heavily involved in manifestos going back to 1997 so it’s right to give someone ...’ he stops, as if on the brink of saying something undiplomatic. ‘It’s right to have a different face doing it.’