Clearly, the best thing a Prime Minister can do is announce that he doesn’t want to be Prime Minister for much longer. David Cameron has just delivered the clearest, most passionate and most authentic speech of his premiership to the Tory party conference, and all of it was founded on him not standing again as party leader in 2020. Early on, he said:
‘We’re only halfway through. For me, that has a very literal meaning. I can say something today that perhaps no Prime Minister has ever really been able to say before. I’m starting the second half of my time in this job. As you know, I am not going to fight another election as your leader. So I don’t have the luxury of unlimited time. Let me tell you: I am in just as much of a hurry as five years ago.’
He may have accidentally told James Landale that he wouldn’t contest another election when he was chopping vegetables during the 2015 campaign, but setting a deadline for his premiership and his near-death experience in May’s election has focused Cameron’s mind so that he has finally set out what he stands for, what he thinks is important, and what he wants to leave office having achieved.
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