David Cameron: Up Close & Personal
Paul Goodman at ConservativeHome profiles Britain's prime minister:
Tomorrow, David Cameron will have served as Prime Minister for six months. Here's my take on what he's like, how he's doing, where he's going.
David Cameron is the ultimate Conservative establishment politician... I remember being taken to lunch - at Whites! (of which his father was Chairman) - by Cameron, shortly after being selected as the Conservative candidate for Wycombe, some ten years ago. The place and the timing were illustrative. Cameron isn't exacly a toff, but he's posh, and the ultimate Conservative establishment politician. No place could better have demonstrated where he feels comfortable. He's spent time outside politics - the dip into television, while waiting for a safe seat - but he's a professional to his fingertips. No run-of-the-mill action could better have shown his attention to detail than initiating lunch with a future colleague, who might perhaps be useful to him in the future. I tend to divide posh people into two groups: the sort who won us the Empire (or at least governed it), and the sort that lost it. Although I can picture Cameron signing away Hong Kong, he's essentially one of the former. One can imagine him being sent out to calm the natives in the Upper Nile or to sign death warrants after the Indian Mutiny. It's not hard to see that high-foreheaded, pink-cheeked, prim-mouthed face framed by a seventeen-century Bishop's wig, or topped with a tricorne.
...Who's re-invented himself, successfully to date, as the People's Dave... Labour were presented in 2005 with a new Conservative leader who was the son of a stockbroker and a magistrate, is an Old Etonian, has shot deer, and was a former member of the Bullingdon Club. On paper, they could have nailed him as an out-of-touch rich kid (and tried). In practice, they failed to pin the charge on him. From the moment George Osborne introduced him at his campaign launch as "my friend Dave", he breezed smoothly on as huskies-driving Dave (though we hear less from him about global warming these days), Desparate Housewives-watching Dave, cycling Dave (he more or less escaped the embarrassing business of the official car chugging along behind), grammar-school-trouble-eluding Dave (the selection row was the low point of his Opposition years) furious-about-the-expenses-scandal Dave (his treatment of out-of-favour MPs was pitiless, and has not been forgotten), not-quite-election-winning-Dave (he doesn't like being reminded of his failure to quite pull it off, and discourages conversation on the subject). He's implementing a huge spending scaleback with painful consequences for many people, but the gloss and shine haven't worn off him, at least yet, although the personal photographer row isn't doing him any good.
...With a touch of the Prime Minister in "Love, Actually". You remember him, dancing around Downing Street playing air guitar? While I can't quite see Cameron doing the same, he's something of the easy-in-his-skin, quick-on-his-feet Hugh Grant character in the film. This a sign that the Steve Hilton branding isn't all fake. For a politician, Cameron is extraordinarily uncomplex ("first class temperament" will surely have featured in his school reports). He's middlebrow. He is hands-on. He grows vegetables, or did. He can cook (a big mark in his favour). He is affable and quick-witted. I suspect that all this communicates itself to a certain tranche of voters, especially women, and when doubled-up with Nick Clegg, in their Richard Curtis chums routine, conveys an certain sunniness of nature (though note that none of the Tory MPs who've crossed him, the Mark Fields and the Patrick Mercers, have been rehabilitated). This helps to explain why Labour's desired image of him as a sneering axe-man hasn't taken root. As, more profoundly, does the distressing memory of Ivan Cameron. I think that the death of the Prime Minister's son is deeply ingrained into the picture that many voters have gradually built up of him.
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