David Cameron
Article added on March 1, 2010
  
David Cameron may well become the UK's next prime minister. But who is he? An untested leader with no executive experience and a master of public relations. Does he have the stature to lead his country still in the midst of an economic and financial crisis? Voters will soon find out. One thing seems to be clear: The days of dilettante Gordon Brown are numbered.

Born in 1966, the leader of the Conservative Party since December 2005, David Cameron is still a relatively unknown quantity. In 2007, two journalists of the Independent on Sunday, Francis Elliott and James Hanning, tried to shed light on his biography: Cameron: The Rise of the New Conservative. Elliott went like Cameron to Eton, Hanning was in Oxford when Cameron studied there philosophy, politics and economics. In short, the biographers are familiar with the Tory leader's educational environment.

The family and education of David Cameron

David Cameron is the son of stockbroker Ian Donald Cameron and his wife, Mary Fleur Mount, a daughter of Sir William Mount, 2nd Baronet. David is a direct descendent of King William IV and his mistress Dorothea Jordan, with whom he had some eight to ten illegitimate children.

The Cameron family has a long history in finance. David's great grandfather, Ewen Cameron, rose to the position of London head of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited, the founding member of the HSBC Group.

David's father is crippled from his knees downwards. Uncomplainingly accepting his fate and demonstrating an inspiring working ethic, he is David's role model.

David Cameron married into a blue-blooded family. His wife Samantha is a member of the Astor and Sheffield family who owned, until 300 years ago, Buckingham House where Buckingham Palace was built later.

David Cameron enjoyed a very traditional upbringing. He went to the no-longer existing Heatherdown school, also frequented by the princes Andrew and Edward. Subsequently, David went to Eton and then Oxford.

He was described as a low-key, charming and well-liked personality. The authors of the biography still managed to find a Cameron schoolmate who called him calculating. Someone in Eton described him as "tough as nails", although nobody seemed to notice, according to this voice. Cameron's determination later led him to win the leadership of the Conservative Party and may lead him in 2010 to win the UK premiership.

With the exception of a Cannabis episode in school in 1982, which he admitted, David never made negative headlines in his youth. The same year, he developed the academic ambition he had been missing until then as well as his interest in politics. According to Elliott and Hanning,  in the early 1980s, Eton and the Conservative Party were synonyms.

From 1985 to 1988, after a three-month internship at a parent's company in Hong Kong, Cameron studied philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) in Oxford. According to the governmental and constitutional specialist Vernon Bogdanor, David belonged to the top 5% of the students he ever taught, a pragmatic, non-ideological Tory. Schoolmates said that, at the time, Cameron loved the Free Market and Margaret Thatcher. Nevertheless, he was not politically active.

David finished his PPE with a “first class degree”. From 1988 to 1992, he worked for the Conservative Research Department, CRD. It was a Tory unit in which rising Conservative talents such as Michael Portillo, Nigel Lawson, Douglas Hurd and Chris Patten had been active.

Thanks to his CRD activity, David Cameron was hired by Prime Minister John Major to prepare his biweekly question time in parliament. Major's answers got better and David was positively mentioned in the British press. The young aid successfully helped other members of cabinet too and found many admirers among journalists.

According to his biographers, in 1992, an overzealous Cameron tried to rework a press release which contained a text agreed on by an independent witness. David was caught by chance. The event made his star sink in the party headquarter.



The devaluation of the British Pound

Cameron had hoped to become an adviser to John Major after the election. The prime minister however decided to take a political secretary. Instead, David got the job of special adviser to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Six months later, Norman Lamont suffered “the Tories' greatest political catastrophe of modern times”. On September 16, 1992 the Conservative government had to take the British Pound out of the European Monetary System (EMS) which led to a substantial devaluation of the £ towards the DM and the $. Cameron surely would have preferred not to be associated with this disaster.

John Major, as Chancellor, had convinced Margaret Thatcher that Britain had to join the ERM. Chancellor Lamont had to bear the consequences. The straitjacket of the ERM did not allow the Treasury to cut interest rates to stimulate the economy as previous Chancellors had done during downturns.

The financial markets believed the ERM was bound to unravel, while the Tory government were determined to press ahead with it. In July 1992, Lamont was still confident that the crisis could be weathered. He hoped that on September 20, the French would vote “oui” in the referendum on the Maastricht Treaty and the pressure on the ERM would automatically ease as the single currency was put on track. The Bank of England was convinced that aggressive and concerted intervention - buying its own currency - would keep the pound within its allowed range of values.

Speculators took advantage of the situation. By early September it was clear that mass interventions by central banks weren't working. The Italian lira had plummeted out of the agreed zone and the pound looked like following. The “petit oui” by the French with 51% destroyed Lamont's hopes.

Some say Lamont should not have implemented a policy he did not believe in. Cameron certainly knew of Lamont's feelings and shared his doubts about the political direction of the European integration. The Euro-enthusiasts Ken Clarke, Douglas Hurd and Michael Heseltine showed no sign of wanting to pull out of the ERM. As a recent graduate, Cameron had no influence on the Chancellor.

According to the biography by Cameron only took one “curious” action: “Just before Black Wednesday he bought me a cigar a foot long”, says Lamont. “By the time you have smoked all of this, all your troubles will be over.” A sign of insouciance of Cameron and a show of moral support for Lamont, David was on holiday with his parents and came back on September 14. Soros and other speculators were ready to kill. On September 15, the head of the Bundesbank Helmut Schlesinger seemed to imply in an interview that it would have been better if Britain had taken the plunge and formally realigned along with Italy. On September 16, the British government spent £3.4 billion unsuccessfully propping up the pound.

Afterwards, Lamont's and Cameron's job hung on the same thread. Cameron wrote Lamont's speech in a lecture to the Conservative Political Centre (CPC), including the line: “No one would die for Europe.” In Brighton however, Lamont made a mess of  the speech written by Cameron. Two bright lights shining directly on to the teleprompters in front of Lamont meant that the chancellor struggled to read his speech. Lamont destroyed the delivery. According to the biographers: “It was a lesson the young Cameron never forgot”. In 2005, Cameron gave the party conference speech that catapulted him from back-marker to frontrunner in the Conservative leadership race without notes - the only candidate to do so.

In 1993, Lamont was under permanent attack. Cameron was the Chancellor's main political adviser. Lamont blamed himself for a reply to BBC's John Pienaar question: “Chancellor, which do you regret most, seeing green shots or singing in the bath?” Lamont replied with Edith Piaf's “Je ne regrette rien”. The authors claim that other people said that Cameron, “the young spin doctor”, had suggested the answer. Soon afterwards, Lamont was offered a lowlier job as Environment Secretary and when he refused it, he was sacked on May 27, 1993.

Cameron is forever associated with Britain's humiliating exit of the ERM and one of the biggest tax-raising budgets of recent times. The biographers conclude that Cameron can claim to have been tested in government in the most difficult circumstances.

Added on March 5, 2010
Cameron's career after Lamont's demise

Ken Clarke wanted his own advisers; Michael Portillo, the new number two asked the new Chancellor if he could have Cameron, but Clarke refused. Cameron was deeply wounded by Clarke's rejection. Cameron was heading out of Whitehall and, it seemed, out of politics.

Ken Clarke phoned up his rival Michael Howard, the new Home Secretary, who took Cameron, but not as his adviser, but as special adviser to the home Office's more junior ministers. Finally, David stayed 15 months. He saw Tony Blair steal law and order for Labour.

Cameron distanced himself from Lamont's vocal opposition to Major's European policy. Incidentally, David's former girlfriend, Laura Adshead, was one of Major's most senior advisers on Europe, who had earned the soubriquet Miss Maastricht and was reported to have spied on gatherings of known Eurosceptics. Cameron with friends rented a villa near Siena, and Norman and Rosemary Lamont came over to have lunch. One guest remembered that Lamont "looked terrible".
 
Howard said that Cameron's greatest talent was his capacity to do the sort of unglamorous work necessary if a politician is to achieve real change, whereas Blair is only interested in eye-catching initiatives. Cameron is prepared to roll up his sleeves and work hard and follow things through.



Out of politics into Michael Green's Carlton Communications

In spring 1994, Cameron told Howard that he would be taking a job outside politics. He was looking for a winnable seat in a local election and, therefore, experience outside Westminster was generally required. Income was a factor too. He and Samantha had become secretly engaged. He wanted to marry her within a year, but the 22-year old woman felt not ready. She felt too young. Then they bought a flat together. He needed a safe Tory seat and a well-paid, high profile job in the private sector to launch his political career.

From 1994 to 1997, Cameron worked for Carlton Communications,  a very successful TV and film company, which was not known for quality programs. Michael Green, chairman of Carlton, was a good friend of Samantha's mother, Annabel Astor. Green said about the job interview with Cameron that David was "crystal clear" that "he wanted to become an MP". Carlton however was looking for people that wanted to stay for life.

Carlton and Green had some legal issues, poor quality and inaccurate court reporting. In 1997, for instance, the ITC intervened several times over breaches of its program code by the company. A PR executive who worked frequently with Cameron at the time summed up his role: "David was the acceptable face of Carlton."

Green was known for being difficult. Publicly, Cameron said in an interview: "He is a terrific character - an inspirational, swashbuckling entrepreneur. He is leaps ahead of everyone else." ... "I think, I hope, I learned from him how to get things done, how to lead with conviction."

Green was one of Thatcher's favorite businessmen. At 17, Green and his brother bought an ailing printing firm, pioneered direct marketing, before breaking into TV production, finally forcing their way into the cartel of commercial broadcasting.

Initially, Cameron was not director of communication, but a member of of the corporate affairs department, believed to act as PA to chairman Michael Green, a trade magazine added.

Cameron went along well with Green. "His sang-froid, his facility with words and his knowledge of the media all impressed Green." He ended up as the director of Carlton's corporate affairs team.

One of Cameron's first political attempts to be selected, for a seat in Ashford in Kent, ended in disaster. Cameron's fight for the Stafford seat was difficult. He rebelled and joined the 200 other Tory candidates who made it clear that they were opposed to monetary union. There was a 10.8% swing from blue to red and Cameron lost the election of May 1997.

Green had held Cameron's job open at Carlton, and the loser continued with Carlton from 1997 to 2001. Elliott and Hanning describe him as a corporate spin doctor. In the late 1990s, Carlton and Cameron began to make enemies among some of the biggest names in financial journalism. He was described as obstructive, bullying and at least on one occasion downright misleading when he put the best possible gloss on the fact that the company's award-winning drugs documentary was a pack of lies. One of his principal functions was as gatekeeper, controlling rather than exciting press interest.

Ian King, business editor of the Sun, wrote before Cameron became the Tory leader in December 2005 that Cameron "went completely off the dial, writing to my boss, more or less inviting him to sack me." Investors were worried about money Carlton was pouring into ITV Digital, then called ONdigital. Cameron claimed they weren't - insisting the business was perfectly healthy. ... [ITV Digital] went bust owing £1.2 billion."

To be continued !

Francis Elliott & James Hanning: Cameron: The Rise of the New Conservative. HarperCollinsPublishers, London, 2007, 342 S. Hardcover. Order the 2007-hardcover edition from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com or Amazon.de. Order the 2009-paperback edition from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com or Amazon.de.

Today's deals at Amazon.com.   -   Special offers on new releases from Amazon.co.uk.

Francis Elliott & James Hanning: Cameron: The Rise of the New Conservative. HarperCollinsPublishers, London, 2007, 342 S. Order the 2007-hardcover edition from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com or Amazon.de. Order the 2009-paperback edition from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com or Amazon.de. The book by the two journalists is the primary source for this article.





Hotel Reservations with Travelnow. Chose your language:
Deutsch - English - Español - Françafont> - Italiano - Svenska.
Best possible internet rates: Special Internet Rate Price Guarantee.
How to get a discount of up to $100.
Special Internet Rate reservation by phone, call 1-800-869-1190 toll free in the U.S.