David cameron

Theresa May’s style of negotiating with the European Union is coming spookily to resemble David Cameron’s. She is in the mindset where the important thing is to get a deal, rather than working out what sort of a deal is worth getting. The EU understands this, and therefore delays, making Cameron/May more desperate to settle, even on bad terms. Eventually, there is an inadequate deal which the British government then has to sell to a doubting electorate. Mr Cameron was punished for this at the referendum he had called. Mrs May is inviting punishment at a general election. It is interesting how moderate politics cannot get a hearing just now.

Before David Cameron became Prime Minister in the 2010 election, he was dealt a setback when his old chum Ed Vaizey suggested that Cameron’s wife Samantha might be voting Labour. Although Cameron’s team were quick to pour cold water on the suggestion – and Vaizey in turn backtracked – the rumour persisted over the years. Now that the pair are out of No 10, Sam Cam has finally set the record straight in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph. The fashion designer tells the paper that she never went so far as to vote Labour – but she did sometimes vote Green: ‘But I didn’t always vote Conservative – sometimes I went

This article originally appeared in the Spectator in March. It is being reposted on Coffee House after the former Prime Minister was pictured letting his hair down at a festival It can be cruel, the way politics plays out. At the very moment George Osborne was telling the bemused staff of the London Evening Standard last week that his working life in politics had obscured a passionate desire to become a newspaper editor, a familiar figure could be seen in the fresh meat department of the Whole Foods supermarket almost directly underneath the paper’s Kensington newsroom. That man was David Cameron, and inevitably someone with journalistic instincts spotted him, snapped

It may not be this week. It may not be Boris Johnson. But eventually a minister will break with this tottering government and establish himself (or herself, for it could be Andrea Leadsom) as the leader of the diehard right. Brexit is crying out for its Ludendorff; the scoundrel who can blame his failures on everyone but himself. The smart move for today’s right wing politicians who find their careers blocked is to break with the Tory leadership – whatever or whoever that may consist of – and resort to old  slogans. The referendum delivered a mandate to leave, Johnson, or whoever takes up the challenge of building a new

Wimbledon wouldn’t be Wimbledon without strawberries and cream, Pimms and…John Bercow in the Royal Box. The speaker of the House of Commons has been something of a permanent fixture over the last few years indulging his love of watching the tennis among the great and the good. Since 2015, he’s managed to get his mitts on £8,000 worth of free tickets to Wimbledon. Today, he’s back in his second favourite seat – watching Jo Konta crash out of the championships while deputy speaker Eleanor Laing filled in for him in the day job in Parliament. Somewhat awkwardly for Bercow though, also in the Royal Box was his old adversary David Cameron. There

I am not sure I can think of any great public assembly in Britain I’d enjoy less than Glastonbury. Within reason, I’m not sure you could even pay me to go there. Glastonbury is a place for dear Hugo Rifkind not for me, and that’s the way I imagine we both prefer it.  Still, there was something worth seeing at Glastonbury this year. Jeremy Corbyn, obviously. His appearance was remarkable, even if it has also prompted a fresh outbreak of one of Britain’s under-appreciated traditional sports: members of the middle-class sneering at other members of the middle-class.  Even so, two things can be said about this. First, the Labour party

Theresa May has few friends at the moment. But while her Christmas card list might be dwindling, her tally of critics is growing rapidly. Yesterday, John Major urged the Prime Minister to ditch a deal with the DUP or risk jeopardising the peace process in Northern Ireland. Now, David Cameron has waded in, calling for the PM to adopt a ‘softer’ approach to Brexit in the wake of last week’s election disaster. The former PM also said that his successor should change tack and ‘listen to other parties’ on the best way of leaving the EU. So, just another ex-Tory leader with too much time on their hands determined to take up the

Was the general election a vote against austerity? I was on the Today programme this morning to discuss this point, and in the course of the interview said that the lowest-paid did best under the Cameron years. This raised some degree of incredulity from Twitter, reported by Huffington Post. What planet am I on? I thought I’d answer. The Cameron years were tough, especially for those on welfare. But the aim was always to make people better-off by moving them into work. David Cameron did cut tax for employers, with corporation tax far lower. Liam Byrne, with whom I was on the Today programme, said that companies hoarded cash –

The Cornish nationalist party Mebyon Kernow (‘sons of Cornwall’) is not contesting any seats in the general election. Its leader of 20 years, Dick Cole, said its members were ‘exhausted’ after their local election campaign — it retained four councillors at ‘County Hall’ (Cornish nationalists always put County Hall in inverted commas, to avoid the inference that the Duchy is a mere county), and were only six votes shy of getting as many seats as Labour. It did not have the resources to fight an election so soon after 2015, when all its candidates lost their deposits. You might find it less surprising to learn that Mebyon Kernow is not

George Osborne’s decision to stand down as an MP is a sign of how impregnable Theresa May’s position is perceived to be. Osborne is the most politically formidable of the Tory sceptics of May’s Brexit plan, and his decision to quit the Commons suggests that he doesn’t think she’ll come unstuck in the next parliament. Of course, Osborne has others things to occupy himself with: the editorship of the Evening Standard and his lucrative work for Black Rock. But one suspects that he’d have been prepared to brazen out the criticism over his multiple jobs if he thought there would be a political sea change in his wing of the