Cameron remains an enigmaThe
two articles below provide interesting insights
but will a man of substance one day appear? New York society toasts Cameron, the new Blair See also As his helicopter soars over the capital into the clouds, David Cameron looks master of the universe. A mere seven months after taking over a Tory party that some felt was fit only for burial, this young blade is flying higher than anyone expected. He carries a red folder marked “action” but even his worst enemy would not accuse him of inaction. Hardly a camera crew is passed without tireless, tie-less Dave mugging it, whether he is launching an assault on chocolate bars or hugging hoodies. Polls suggest his policies on public services are more popular than Labour’s. The problem is he doesn’t have any policies. At least brand Tory is no longer toxic. And the leader seems almost human — which after the deadly duo of Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard is a welcome change. But as Cameron points out his house far below us, the question forms: is he just full of the hot air emanating from the eco-windmill adorning his roof? His “‘Cameroons” chatter about creating an “aroma”, but as parliament goes into recess at the end of his first session, where is the coffee? Are voters beginning to thirst for something more satisfying? The latest poll shows Dave’s popularity dipping: is Air Cameron heading for turbulence? To find out I spend the day on Dave Force One, Cameron’s chopper. We meet at London’s Battersea Helipad; no bicycles today. “I do offset carbon emissions,” he assures me, three times. So what Tory peer-cum-donor is paying for this? “Lord Harris of Carpets,” smiles Cameron, patting the champagne in the glove compartment. Everything about him looks smooth, particularly his cheeks: does he need to shave — or even shower? For a man who claims to have been up since 5am with his two-year-old daughter and who has shortly to deliver a speech in Gujarati, he looks remarkably calm. “We have a Nepalese girl helping us out with our son but she said it sounded gobbledygook.” Er, probably because they don’t speak Gujarati in Nepal, Dave. Such tactlessness is endearing: my main doubt about this former PR fixer had been that he is all spin and no substance. As he relaxes and pokes fun at his colleagues, to the rising hysteria of minders, a real personality peeps through. As he borrows a compact to check his face he shoots me a mischievous look: “I should emphasis this is not mine. However, Oliver Letwin does own his own powder puff.” However, when Cameron rejects a photograph of himself for the conference programme, joshing that it is “ruined” by the presence in the background of a less photogenic colleague, his PR minder finally flips. A friendly kick is administered. Charm comes with his background — Eton and Oxford — but humour is classless. He is wryly amusing describing the antics of smart sorts suddenly jumping aboard Air Cameron: “We have been marking off the non-electoral milestones on the march to power: Boris Johnson turning up on time, or that banker Russell Chambers that Tony Blair hangs around with asking me to lunch. But I have defined the ‘moment’ as Tina Brown telling George Osborne she would like to organise a dinner for me in New York.” It was Brown (former editor of The New Yorker magazine) who memorably launched Tony Blair there when he was on the up; New York only does winners. Where will this celebritisation of Conservatism end? “Well,” he laughs, “Madonna’s mother-in-law is very important in the party; perhaps she can get Madge on the A-List . . .” The helicopter is landing in Leicester next to a vast tent, where Cameron will address a Hindu festival. The tent is packed with several thousand sari clad listeners, although an organiser whispers that they have not come to hear Cameron but Bapu, a sort of Archbishop of Canterbury for Hindus. Dave approaches Bapu, who is reclining on a bed on a giant stage. Cameron bows, holds his hands together and you almost expect him to say “Goodness gracious me”. Instead he addresses the crowd in what sounds — to the untrained ear — like fluent Gujarati. Before arriving he had shrugged: “For all I know my speech could be calling for Kashmiri independence.” Today, when Cameron’s speech shifts back into English, it is all platitudes about living in harmony. You almost expect him to break into Imagine. He tells the audience they are all jolly good chaps and they love it, even Bapu, who speaks no English. The speech is being watched by 8m people live in India. Later, Asian lads jostle to be snapped with Dave: did this ever happen to IDS? Soon we are back in the stratosphere, Leeds bound. Cameron is opening his post. He hands me a miniature hoodie with “Conservative” on the back: “A company makes them as covers for iPods. It shows the kind of people we are reaching out to. I’m writing back saying I have a Nano (an even smaller kind of iPod).” His “hug a hoodie” message, he insists, is not vacuous: “It has been positive, emphasising where we have to make up ground.” Aren’t you and your kitchen cabinet having a laugh, seeing how far you can push traditional Tories? Dave is cross for the first time and looks out of the window. “There are some real things that need to change,” he says, rattling off a list. “I don’t think the party should be too surprised because they voted for change. I didn’t suck up to the party, I told them I wanted to lead on my terms.” Does he believe all this right-on eco-stuff that he spouts? “I wouldn’t be taking some quite big risks,” he says, arms shaking with emphasis, “if I didn’t.” But Dave also, presumably, believed Howard’s disastrous last election manifesto. After all, he wrote it. “Coming out of the back room and into the front room you are able to put your stamp on it. It allows me to address issues of my generation.” It is true that he is the first leader to hit the right buttons to engage Generation X. Under questioning he admits that in the elections of 2001 and 2005 he realised the Tories were toxic: “It was knocking on doors of aspirational couples. I sensed it wasn’t so much about policies; Conservatism didn’t seem for them. It was about clearing away some of the debris. A Conservative government must be more green, more local, more family friendly, less arrogant. That’s why it’s important to address questions such as child care: I expect your wife and you talk about it all the time.” On the work/life balance stuff Cameron certainly seems sincere. He smiles warmly as he describes his daughter Nancy, 2, insisting on taking her scooter to bed at night. Oh, and how even she now calls him “Dave”. Then there is, of course, the sadness of his eldest son Ivan, 4, who has cerebral palsy and epilepsy. And the small matter of Arthur Elwen, six months, the latest addition to the Cameron brood. “The last three weeks have been manic,” he says, looking momentarily exhausted. Where does all this bonhomie lead? Critics say it is mood music; Cameron would not legislate to, say, give us more time off with our children. The accusation that sticks is the lack of substance, so come on Dave, where’s the beef? I fire some quick policy questions. Do we need more prisons? “Yes, that’s clear.” But while Howard said prison works and Cameron indeed says courts should have the capacity to send people to prison, new Dave offers a softer justification: “Prisoners can’t be rehabilitated in overcrowded prisons.” Having recently discovered that he is a green who also happens to be supported by people with big cars, is he in favour of Ken Livingstone’s swingeing tax, as mayor of London, on über-polluting 4x4s? Again he is equivocal: people should be “encouraged” to be environmental, but he — conveniently — does not support “a tax here and a tax there”. Would he face down his friend Zac Goldsmith and support nuclear power? “Of course,” he says, adding that nuclear power is a “last resort”. Is the BBC licence fee too high? “It is too high. And they do need to look very closely at the big boot of the BBC coming thumping into a new market and suddenly the internet service, the education provider, the small publishing businesses are completely squashed.” When we start on education I feel for the first time I’ve struck policy rock. He enthuses about a school he visited in Portsmouth that he thinks might hold the key for all our schools: it has abolished year groups so pupils move up or down according to ability, not age. “That’s really exciting,” he says. “Selection within schools rather than between schools.” He then launches an impassioned attack, for a Tory old Etonian, on selective education: “Some 93% of parents send their children to state schools and they want to know what you are going to do to improve schools for everybody. “We had 18 years to create lots of grammar schools and we didn’t do so. What we need is to find the new answer, to create social mobility, a great education for children of the future that grammar schools provided in the past. We need a real expansion of setting in schools, where you group according to ability: you can stretch the brightest children and help those falling behind. You can have a good teacher in a smaller class for those who are struggling and the bright young teacher to help those soaring ahead.” At his model Portsmouth school, “children arrive at 11 and they test them in three different ways and if you are good at maths you go to the top set with children of a different age group. I met 15-year-olds doing AS-levels”. Sometimes he sounds as if he has moved so far to the centre that he is implying that he, not Gordon Brown, is Blair’s heir. “I find that an almost impossible question,” is his very smooth answer. When I remark that Blair has lost that almost telepathic connection with voters, Cameron shows his admiration: “I think Blair is quite good at being in touch with what the public think.” His criticism is that Blair offers endless “Mcpolicy”: “Thinking the 55th crime strategy will beat the 54th.” As for Brown, he is more of a “total politician”, but — with a line that must have them chortling at Tory dinners — he adds: "I will never be as good attacking Blair as Brown is.” He expresses himself “irritated” that chatter about “aromas” has obscured what a good job the opposition has done “shredding” the government’s programme on everything from ID cards to the odious religious hatred bill. “What has the PM achieved domestically in the last seven months? Er, the educational bill, and only with my help.” On foreign affairs, he defends Blair on the supposed scandal of being addressed as “Yo Blair” by President Bush. “Everyone says Yo!” Cameron says, puzzled. “I did not greet that news with shock and awe.” For the first time Cameron seems to dare to attack Blair’s slavish Americanism: “Charles Powell told me that although the relationship was very strong between Reagan and Thatcher, sometimes Reagan would hold the phone away from his ear as he was being shouted at.” He contrasts that with the craven picture of Blair painted by Sir Christopher Meyer (a recent ambassador to Washington) in his memoirs: “We should be a candid friend.” As with so many criticisms of Tone by Dave, Tone could turn them back on him. Dave is just as much an Atlanticist. Tone is indeed an inveterate spinner, but so is Dave. Tone is up to his neck in dodgy loans, but Dave is forced to concede that taking the massive loans that bankrolled their own election campaign was not the Tories’ finest hour. But he does not, he says, moving on swiftly, want to “dwell on the past”. However, he declares that (making an exception to his usual scepticism about government handouts) he supports limited state funding of parties: “We have to come up with an answer.” He wants to reduce the parties’ annual spending to a maximum of £15m and cap at £50,000 a donation that an individual can make. He vows to veto any Blair proposal to exempt unions from this cap, but that is hardly enough to give him the high ground. Is he expecting PC Plod to haul him in for questioning alongside Blair and his cronies? “I’m not expecting it, no,” he says, looking shocked. “I haven’t put forward a list of peers of my own.” Still, Cameron is remorseless. Everything, like Blair, seems to spark an initiative. As we fly over Barnsley football club he reveals that he has met the chairman and, following the Italian bribery scandal, is to set up his own football commission investigating corruption in the British game. He tells me that his team is fully geared for a snap Brown election. Everything, he suggests, is on the up. There is no doubt that he is a class act. But it is surely an act — isn’t it? And can he wing it all the way to Downing Street? Word of the meteoric rise of David Cameron has reached the highest echelons of New York society. In a sign that he may have been recognised as potentially a “new” Tony Blair and the next prime minister, the Tory leader is to be feted in the Big Apple. In an interview with The Sunday Times today, Cameron says that he has been invited to a welcome dinner by Tina Brown, former editor of The New Yorker and Vanity Fair magazines. It was Brown and her husband Sir Harold Evans, the former Sunday Times editor, who feted Blair during the mid-1990s, helping to introduce the Labour leader to Manhattan society and potential supporters on the expatriate circuit. Cameron also says that another figure associated with new Labour has been in touch — Russell Chambers, the City banker who has holidayed with the Blairs in Barbados. “We have been marking off the non-electoral milestones on the march to power,” Cameron says. “Boris Johnson [education spokesman] turning up on time, or that banker Russell Chambers that Tony Blair hangs around with asking me to lunch. “But I have defined the moment as Tina Brown telling George Osborne [shadow chancellor] she would like to organise a dinner for me in New York.” Cameron also hints that he is considering reforms to how children are taught in comprehensives. A Tory government might favour teaching children in groups of the same ability across different age groups — rather than the traditional grouping by age. One of the few state schools which already does this — Bridgemary community school in Gosport, Hampshire — was visited by Cameron a year ago when he was shadow education secretary. Pupils up to two years apart are taught in the same class. According to the head teacher, the system has improved exam results. Cameron says: “If you are good at maths you go to the top set with children of a different age group. I met 15-year-olds who were doing AS-levels.” Cameron indicates that he supports limited state funding for political parties and a £50,000 cap on individual donations. In a move which is likely to bring him into conflict with Labour, he insists that this cap should cover union donations as well. Cameron also says that he intends to set up a commission to investigate corruption in British football, following the recent Italian football bribery scandal. See also Cameron – talking dirty Ross's obscene Thatcher slur Rape David Cameron's windmill Is David Cameron AC/DC? Is David Cameron intelligent? Was David Cameron guilty? Sex, drugs and David Cameron Cameron - an upmarket yob? David Cameron Samantha Cameron |
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