RSS

Contact us

Friday 22 August 2008

Trying to work out what David Cameron really thinks, I had a strange sense of déjà vu

Nick Robinson reviews the week in politics

Brown had been at the top of government for ten 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 — in particular, his father’s religious teaching and the impact of almost losing his sight — were already well documented. In comparison, much less is known about how Cameron’s 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 Oxford University’s answer to the Bash Street kids. 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, the young candidate Cameron rallied his party conference with a call for a return to a tax-cutting agenda and to fight Labour’s plans to tame the ‘British lion’ and turn her into a ‘federalist pussycat’. 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 ‘modernising’ the Tory party.

More articles from: Nick Robinson | this section

Print this article  |  Email to a friend  |  Permalink  |   Comments (3)

Post this entry to:   del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Advertisement

Spectator Business | Apollo Magazine

Corporate | Advertising | Privacy | Terms

Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP

All Articles and Content Copyright ©2008 by The Spectator | All Rights Reserved