Cameron’s big idea is simple: he doesn’t need one

Wednesday, 6th January 2010

The Tories have opened the new year in a blaze of speeches and promises. But what does it all add up to? Nothing, says James Forsyth — and that’s deliberate. There will never be such a thing as Cameronism

Once more, search parties are being sent out to look for David Cameron’s big idea. They will return empty-handed. For the truth is that there is no big idea. However much social responsibility, the post-bureaucratic age or progressive conservatism might be talked up as the ‘big idea’, they are not it. Rather, they are a set of classic conservative insights updated for the 21st century. Cameron is not an ideologue but rather that very English, very Tory thing: a principled pragmatist.

‘It is impossible to understand David by applying any ideological spectrum test,’ warns one member of the shadow Cabinet. This is not meant in a derisory way. It is just that Cameron is not a politician who worries about ideological purity. As he wrote soon after becoming Tory leader, ‘I don’t believe in “isms”. Words like communism, socialism, capitalism and republicanism all conjure up one image in my mind: extremism.’

What David Cameron really believes is a question that intrigues even his oldest political friends. A while back, I was having a drink with two of them: one close enough to have been to his stag party, the other to play a key role in his selection as the candidate for Witney. We began to talk about what really motivated the man who is likely to be prime minister by the summer. Was it anything more than reaching the top of the cursus honorum? Both leant back in thought. Then one piped up: marriage and the family and education.

In fact, one said, Cameron believed so strongly in marriage that he had even berated his friend and strategy guru Steve Hilton for not getting married — and delivered this dressing down in front of a roomful of people at work. As for education, Cameron took that brief when Michael Howard offered him any job he wanted in the shadow Cabinet after the last election. So this, from two of the people who know him best, is what Cameron is all about.

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Minnie Ovens

January 7th, 2010 1:39pm Report this comment

There is a distinct possibility Cameron can win the election with an ethereal Manifesto.
Which will lead to a hung ethreal (no, that is not delicate and refined) parliament.
The worst of all scenarios.
A new revitalized leadership in the Labour party, seeing the possibility of another quick election, will dump all the ills of the UK on Cameron's shoulders and Clegg doing what LD's do best; being an opportunist.
That is the last thing needed by Britain at this time.

Yam Yam

January 7th, 2010 3:16pm Report this comment

"What matters is what works". Now where have I heard that matntra before.

Hugh

January 7th, 2010 6:18pm Report this comment

Pragmatism - and he and Osborne and Hammond are going to have to be supremely pragmatic for two or three years. As pragmatic as any Receiver or Liquidator.

djw2009

January 7th, 2010 11:54pm Report this comment

James, it is a very lazy point you are making, that English conservatism is pragmatic and non-ideological. The reason is that that pragmatism was fine in the years before the state took over society and before the cultural revolution of the past 40 years or so. Conservatives in the 19th century could simply support the status quo and oppose -isms, which were all grand theories that would lead to state intervention in pursuit of some end or other.

But now those -isms have been implemented. Socialism. Egalitarianism. Multiculturalism. All -isms, and all fully implemented in England today. If Cameron is a pragmatist, he will just lazily go with the flow and not take on the managerial state - and that means that he is lying when he says he doesn't believe in -isms. Those -isms will continue to flourish unless the Tories cut them down, and if Cameron won't cut them down, he supports them. The worst has already happened to our society - any leader who is pragmatic in the face of that is simply complacent at best and a traitor at worst.

Teck Khong

January 8th, 2010 1:05am Report this comment

Cameroonism is I believe a living political organism that is building its core with new additions that are constantly being sucked in, filtered and sanitized from a range of gathering systems – you only have to look around at the mechanisms adopted and various receptacles specially created for that as well as those casually visited by Cameron for substrates.

That way, a broad consensus is achieved in Stage 1 of the project – getting elected. Stage 2 – consolidation of a Cameron government – will be implemented on a clearer definition of what is required, so there should be no surprises if various policies in the future have no consistent ideology but are guided only by evolving necessities.

David Bouvier

January 8th, 2010 11:38am Report this comment

James - Do you not appreciate that "a mix of fiscal conservatism, supply-side economics and political pragmatism." is a pretty could summary of Thatcher and Howe's approach in the early 80s. Hopefully Cameron realises that this is only moderate conventional wisdom because of the battles won by Thatcher and her government.

If after his experiences at the Treasury, Cameron really does not have any understanding of economic history and is instead "the slave of some defunct economist" we are real trouble.

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