Where Cameron has a real Achilles’ heel is his hang-up about the
privilege of his background. Another of his slick slogans is “It’s not where
you’re from, it’s where you’re going”. This may be intended to reassure
those who have been born without the advantages Cameron has enjoyed that he
wants to create a meritocratic society in which they, too, can flourish.
But, in my dealings with him, what is really noticeable is how he wants to
distance himself from his own wealth and how often he “bigs up”, as he might
put it, the way his party has recruited people from very different
backgrounds to his own. At times, he and his associates sound like the posh
girl Jarvis Cocker sends up in the blistering Common People.
I wanted to know when he started caring about the poor. Did he ever come
across poor people growing up? “Yes, of course.” When and how? “Well, in my
home life, where I lived, you were very aware of the country you were in.”
Where in your home life? “I’m trying to think…” Did you know any poor people?
“Yes, of course. People who are less well off than me, yes of course.” Where
did you meet them? You didn’t meet them at Eton, did you?
“No, but at home.” How did you meet them at home? “I don’t want to disinter my
entire childhood and who I played with and what it was like…”
He knew as well as I did that this wasn’t really a satisfactory response and
so, a week later, sent me a longish e-mail attempting to make a link between
his views now and how those seeds might first have been sewn.
“Here’s what I think. I was brought up in a stable and prosperous
family. But we were always aware – and made aware – of just how fortunate we
were. Mum was a magistrate for some 30 years and very plugged in to the
community. We’d talk a lot about what she did and in many ways she embodied
that sense of giving something back and public service that I believe in. Of
course, the schools I went to were quite exclusive, but we weren’t cut off
from the rest of the world and had quite a free country childhood in a busy
and socially mixed village.”
He went on to say that he’d done some social work at school, visiting an old
lady and doing her shopping, but that his view of social responsibility – a
bit like his view of politics – “didn’t leap fully formed… in some cathartic
moment… It just emerged as I got older… For me a really big part of wanting
to be, and being, an MP is the social work. I love it and still do now with
everything else going on. Some might see this as rather an old-fashioned
view of public service – and I accept it can sound a bit patrician, but it’s
what I think.”
I only get one flash of that Mr Nasty streak in Mr Nice when I raise the
question of the Camerons’ various properties. We had been talking about his
bewilderment about the depth of dislike that some people in the Labour party
have towards the Conservatives: “Where I think Conservatives tend to feel
Labour are misguided and wrong, there are some people in the Labour Party
who just think the Tories are awful and evil, which is ridiculous and wrong.”
In my attempt to explain why they might have these feelings – I confess to
shuddering whenever I see that photograph of young David and Boris in their
Bullingdon Club regalia – I mention the four houses: “The four
properties thing is rubbish. Touching that you believe everything you read
in the newspapers!” You patronising git, I exclaim.
“I don’t mean it like that, but…” So how many properties do you own? “I own a
house in North Kensington which you’ve been to and my house in the
constituency in Oxfordshire and that is, as far as I know, all I have.”
A house in Cornwall? “No, that is, Samantha used to have a timeshare in South
Devon but she doesn’t any more.” And there isn’t a fourth? “I don’t think so
– not that I can think of.” Please don’t say, “Not that I can think of.”
“You might be… Samantha owns a field in Scunthorpe but she doesn’t own a
house…”
The rest of the interview was punctuated with Cameron’s nagging anxiety about
how this exchange was going to make him sound: “I was wondering how that
will come across as a soundbite”; “‘Not that I can think of’ makes me sound…
I am really worried about that…”; “I am still thinking about this house
thing”; and his parting shot was: “Do not make me sound like a prat for not
knowing how many houses I’ve got.”
At the end of our interminable day all those months ago in the North East –
visits to factories, including Nissan, which had just laid off 1,200 workers
(on Cameron’s walkabout, he came across as a paternalistic factory owner in
the Lawrentian mould, which bewildered the remaining employees), a college
where unemployed adults were offered retraining courses, a meeting of the
party faithful (a scattering of spiky-haired youths among the
tweed-and-pearls set), a Cameron Direct, where the public get to ask the
would-be Prime Minister any questions, public or personal – Cameron himself
seemed a little vanquished by the ceaseless grind of it all. As we sat in
the train – first class, but still pretty grim, with its glowering lights
and sweating paninis – he wondered what the day had achieved.
In an effort to cheer him up, I said that, come what may, he has achieved
something, has he not, by bringing a party back from the wilderness and
making it, for the first time in years, seem electable. In some ways, Blair
– to whom he once said he was the heir – had it easier because getting rid
of Clause Four was such a symbolic gesture of change. I asked Cameron if the
former PM had been an inspiration: “I wouldn’t put him down as one of the
people who inspired me, no,” he said, but I’m not sure I believe him. “I do
think that his success in transforming and modernising his party was
impressive and what he did was an important achievement for the country.
“Clause Four was totemistic and it was a great totem for him to have. I
haven’t had anything like that but I like to think that all the changes I’ve
made to the party and policy and modernisation – the attitude towards
people’s sexuality and life choices, more diversity – does accumulatively
present something exciting. But in the end it will be up to the voters to
decide.”
It’s clear that for Cameron, it’s not enough to make his party electable; what
matters to him is getting elected. And now, more than ever, as Gordon Brown
lurches from crisis to crisis, it seems that the voters are inclining
towards the devil they don’t know rather than the one they think they do.
Cameron appears to have learnt a lesson from all those Dave-ish action films
he loves: who dares wins.
