David Cameron: Class Act by Cawthorne Nigel

Author:Cawthorne, Nigel [Cawthorne, Nigel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sharpe Books
Published: 2018-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven – The Greasy Pole

As soon as Cameron arrived in the House of Commons, he had to decide who to back in the leadership election. For a moment, he even considered standing himself, but quickly realized it was too soon.

Nevertheless, a week after being elected, he set out his stall. He told the Daily Telegraph : “Millwall fans used to be proud of the fact that ‘nobody likes us; we don’t care’. The Conservative Party must not fall into the same trap. It has to change its language, change its approach, start with a blank sheet of paper and try to work out why our base of support is not broader. Anyone could have told the Labour Party in the 1980s how to become electable. It had to drop unilateral disarmament, punitive tax rises, wholesale nationalization and unionization. The question for the Conservative Party is far more difficult because there are no obvious areas of policy that need to be dropped. We need a clear, positive, engaging agenda on public services.”

Two weeks later, Cameron’s name appeared on a list of possible Portillo backers, in the belief that he was going to win.

The parliamentary sketch writers could not wait for Cameron’s maiden speech as there was a tradition in the House of praising one’s predecessor. He did this with characteristic deftness. Woodward, he said, “remains a constituent, and a most significant local employer, not least in the area of domestic service …” As a Labour candidate, Woodward had taken stick over the fact that he had a butler, courtesy of his wife, supermarket heiress Camilla Sainsbury.

“We are in fact quite close neighbours,” Cameron continued. “On a clear day, from the hill behind my cottage, I can almost see some of the glittering spires of his great house.”

His mother watched the speech on the parliamentary channel and phoned up to say: “You need a haircut to stop looking like Peter Mandelson, don’t wave your arms around while speaking and tell the man behind you to stop picking his nose.”

In the first round of the leadership ballot, Portillo was eliminated.

“The Spanish armada goes down with all hands, including this particular new boy,” rued Cameron. “Our man had offered leadership, radical change and ideas that challenged the party both in parliament and the country. They simply weren’t ready for it. In many ways it is a view I share.”

In the second round, Cameron voted for the winner Iain Duncan Smith over Ken Clarke because, he said: “Mr Clarke’s saloon bar habit of calling his opponents ‘head bangers’ or ‘hangers and floggers’ always gives me the shivers … Mr Clarke’s man-of-the-people, broad-brush approach has minuses as well as pluses. As a former adviser put it to me years ago: ‘The trouble with Ken’s broad brush is that everyone else gets splattered with paint.’” It was, of course, Kenneth Clarke who had lost him his job at the Treasury when he took over from Norman Lamont.

Cameron was immediately appointed to the prestigious Home Affairs Select Committee, a showcase for new talent.

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