Sunday, May 2, 2010

General Election 2010: How well do we really know David Cameron?

David Cameron strives to present himself as an open book, but how well do we really know him? Mick Brown joins the would-be PM on the stump in the West Country.

By Mick Brown

Cameron is not a great believer in epiphanies. 'I’m not like that,’ he says.

'I drink things in, think them through and then work them out.’

Nor does he believe in grand visions.

'People who tell you too much about their utopia, I always get a bit worried that suddenly we’ll be forced to wear the same uniform. When you hear about someone’s vision to remake the world, you do need a bit of, “hmm, that’s interesting… How much freedom am I going to have in that one, and how much is that going to cost me?”’

So it is that when I ask him when it first occurred to him that he might one day be Prime Minister, his answer is careful, pragmatic, considered. It was after the last election in 2005, he says, when he first considered running for the leadership of the Conservative Party. 'And I did think even then that it would mean putting myself forward for the highest job in the land. Even though people said, “Well, you haven’t got any chance of winning the Conservative leadership.” I thought about it quite seriously, even before taking that initial step, because once you’ve taken that one step you are taking that potentially bigger step.

'I didn’t think, “Well, that’s going to be straightforward”, because there’s a huge number of steps between A and Z, and I wanted to be totally sure that I was up to the job. I don’t have some sort of ironclad certainty. I don’t have a sense of irredeemable destiny. That’s not what I’m like.’

If Cameron becomes Prime Minister next week he would, at 43, be the youngest person to hold the highest job in the land since Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, who was a year younger when he became Prime Minister in 1812. He would also be the first Prime Minister since Sir Alec Douglas-Home (1963-4) to have gone to Eton. This fact always rears its head sooner rather than later in any discussion of Cameron: a demonstration of how tenaciously the fact of privilege still obtains in Britain, or perhaps a true symbol of egalitarianism – even a toff can be PM.

But what Cameron is like remains, curiously, and even at this late stage, open to question. Perhaps more than any other politician of the modern age, Cameron has striven to present himself as an open book. We see pictures of him jogging, at home in his kitchen; if we saw his wife on the street nothing would be more natural than to greet her as 'Sam’. But do we really know who David Cameron is?

Shortly before the televised debates, I joined Cameron on a day-trip to the West Country, targeting two marginal constituencies, in Exeter and Bristol, and culminating in one of the public meetings – he calls them Cameron Direct – which he has been conducting since June 2008 (the Bristol meeting would be the 71st). Cameron is travelling with his two press aides. It is a crisp day, threatening rain, but he is dressed simply in his statutory smart blue suit and a white shirt. Cameron does not carry a briefcase, just a mobile phone and a BlackBerry; but his aides man­handle a box of documents the size of a suitcase.

On the journey down to Exeter he reads his briefing notes and skims the morning newspapers. He usually spends no more than 10 minutes on them each morning: The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and The Daily Mail, trying to strike a balance, he says, between being informed and being sucked into the media-driven agenda.

He does not have a television permanently on in his office. 'Brown does, apparently,’ he says. 'But look at Barack Obama. If he’d been following the diktats of the 24-hour media cycle he’d have ditched health care months ago, rather than following it through.’ This is said admiringly. Cameron has met Obama twice and thinks highly of him. 'That whole “No drama Obama” thing is absolutely right. He’s calm, measured and very human. We were talking about Afghanistan and he went straight to what the problems were facing the country, rather than just harping on about strategy.’

You do not have to spend long with David Cameron to recognise that he is extremely clever, astute, quick on the uptake and with a ready, jocular humour. But he is not, at first blush, a particularly warm man. He answers questions readily, but in a determinedly businesslike manner, on his own terms. He is personable, but in a guarded way.

Cameron once harboured thoughts of being a journalist himself; he spent several years as the head of corporate affairs at Carlton, the television and media company. He is well-practised in the dark arts of spin, and you sense that he regards journalists as being useful but potentially tricky, to be dealt with politely and diplomatically, but kept at arm’s length.

His friend Michael Gove, the Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, who has known Cameron for more than 20 years, describes him as 'a very English person. He’s not someone – and most Englishmen aren’t – who talks freely and easily in the open-hearted Oprah-esque fashion that some do. But he’s extremely good company. Over a drink or over dinner he does open up, and enjoys talking about issues and friends and people in common as much as, in fact even more than, shop.’

It is interesting in this regard to contrast the guarded figure that Cameron presents in person with the figure that he cuts in public. A week or so before joining Cameron in the West Country, I had watched him at one of his Cameron Directs, at a high school in Holmfirth in Yorkshire. Cameron enjoys these events. There is no substitute for the personal appearance; he likes the banter, and it is an opportunity to learn what is on the mind of the electorate, rather than obsessing about what he calls 'the media village’.

'You find out pretty quickly areas where your policy hits the nail on the head, and areas where actually you’re getting a lot of questions about pot-holes – and you feel you should have a policy on pot-holes.’ He enjoys mastering detail. Like every Tory candidate, on his BlackBerry Cameron has an app of the party’s campaign guide – outlining all of its policies, as well as answers to every point of Labour policy.

'David knows more about the fine detail of policy than anyone in the party, possibly bar Oliver Letwin, who has a brain the size of Venus,’ one of his aides says. He certainly has an answer for everything. If you had the opportunity to ask only one question of the putative Prime Minister, it might not be what he intends to do to enforce the law against driving while using your mobile phone, as one member of the Holmfirth audience did. But Cameron takes it all in his stride, fielding questions on everything from civil partnerships (stridently in favour) to promoting British heritage overseas ('I was talking about this with the Chinese ambassador just the other day…’).

His presentation is flawless – fluent, commanding and often extremely witty, alive to the inherent absurdities of politics as showbusiness. 'Will you be interviewed by Piers Morgan?’ one person asks. 'I’ll be doing Trevor McDonald,’ Cameron replies. 'I think it’s on after Dancing on Ice.’

He doesn’t duck awkward questions, nor does he pander to the audience. 'You won’t like this answer,’ he warns, more than once. Afterwards I talk to a couple who had voted Green at the last election. Cameron, they said, had been 'very impressive. But then again, you wonder if we’d have said the same thing if we’d seen Tony Blair before he became Prime Minister.’ Ah yes, the Blair question. We shall return to this.

Nearing Exeter, we pull into a service station for coffee. Cameron has put on a tie. A couple, holidaymakers, recognise him with a start as he passes their table. He stops and shakes hands. 'A bit of electioneering on the hoof,’ he says as we leave. 'But you can go too far. I was in Golborne Road market [in Notting Hill] the other day and a man wearing three earrings came up and said, “I’ve voted Labour all my life, but this time I’m voting Conservative.” So I said, would you be in one of our posters, and he told me to “f-off”.’ Cameron laughs.

He has come to Exeter to visit a garage, which has the novelty of being owned and run by a woman, Jennifer Riach. It’s an opportunity to plug Tory policy on small and medium-size businesses.

'Is it Jenny or Jennifer?’ Cameron asks his aide. 'And is it an all-woman garage?’ This is a joke.

'As you can see, we are an all-woman team,’ he says. 'I don’t employ a man if I can possibly help it.’ This appears to be true. Most of Cameron’s aides are women, as is the local prospective Tory candidate, Hannah Foster, who is also on hand, despite the fact that her husband, an Army officer, is leaving for Afghanistan that day.

The local media have gathered in force. These sorts of events are invariably excruciating – a mixture of rictus smiles, forced joviality and photo-opportunism – but Cameron seems very much at ease. He is led to a bay, where a man with a ponytail breaks off from tinkering on a car. Cameron gazes under the bonnet with what looks like rapt interest. 'I’ve got a 10-year-old Skoda which is beginning to give me a few problems,’ he says.

Cameron has a well-practised response whenever the subject of his background is raised, about how for a long time it has felt as if his full name is 'the Old Etonian David Cameron’. 'There is a slight frustration that there’s a label that attaches to you,’ he says, 'but frankly you’ve had all the advantages in life so the fact that you’re going to have to cope with this…’ he shrugs, 'well, big bloody deal.’

Cameron grew up in the small Berkshire village of Peasemore – the very definition of comfortable, county England. His father, Ian, was a stock­broker and the chairman of Whites, the men’s club. His mother, Mary, served as a JP in Newbury for 30 years, during which time she was obliged to pass judgment both on the eco-warrior Swampy and the Greenham Common protesters, 'including,’ Cameron says with a laugh, 'her own sister. That was an interesting one.’

He is the third of four children and it was a household where, as one friend would put it, 'whingeing was not on the menu’. 'The Dad’, as Cameron calls his father, was a constant example in this respect. Ian Cameron was born with severely deformed legs that necessitated several operations and left him having to wear special raised boots, yet he always refused to see himself as 'disabled’, even to the point of playing a useful game of tennis.

'My father always used to say that nothing in life is fair, but both he and Mum were very much of the view that you had to muck in and get on with things and deal with the difficult stuff that comes your way.’ In recent years Ian has had both his legs amputated, and has lost the sight in one eye. 'But still I’ve never really heard him whinge about anything. He is a very optimistic person.’

Cameron’s childhood was in every way exemplary of his caste. At the age of seven he was sent away to prep school, Heatherdown (where the Princes Andrew and Edward were also pupils), where new boys were allowed to bring their own teddy, and where on school sports day, the portable loos would bear the signs ladies, gentlemen and chauffeurs. From there to Eton, and then to Oxford, where he read PPE at Brasenose, and graduated with a First.

Politics had been a peripheral interest at home. His parents both voted Tory, but were not, he says, party members. 'They wouldn’t have gone to meetings or anything like that. My dad would always send me off to warm up the television when the news was coming on – I’m old enough to remember that. So we talked about what was going on in the world, but not in a political sense.’ He says his earliest political memory – 'weirdly’ – is the trial of the former Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe in 1979 (Cameron was 12 at the time), but it was the events of the following decade that were to shape his political outlook.

'The 1980s was a fascinating decade – strikes and unions and privatisations and CND marches and all the rest of it. I wasn’t particularly a Thatcher fan, but I just thought, on these themes, of course we shouldn’t be on strike the whole time, and should have business that could compete and succeed, and that if the Russians have the bomb we probably ought to have it too. So I thought, on all those arguments Mrs Thatcher is probably making the right decisions.’

So, instinctively Conservative?

'Yes, liberal Conservative, instinctively.’

After briefly considering, and discounting, journalism and banking, in 1988 the 21-year-old Cameron went to work at the Conservative Research Department. He rose to become the head of the political section, where his duties included briefing ministers and combing newspapers for opposition party quotes that could be turned into ammunition for John Major at Prime Minister’s Questions. For the 1992 election, he worked full-time at No10, where, Chris Patten would later recall, he 'did the work of five men’.

He went on to work at the Treasury as an adviser and speech writer to Norman Lamont, impressing the Chancellor with his 'quickness and general intelligence’ and political nous. 'I always thought he would do very well and go far in politics,’ Lamont now says.

Cameron was at Lamont’s side on September 16 1992 – Black Wednesday – as the Chancellor addressed reporters following his announcement that Britain was suspending membership of the ERM. Lamont remembers as the crisis deepened Cameron giving him 'the biggest cigar I’ve ever seen’, with a note attached: 'By the time you’ve smoked this, all your troubles will be over.’

Lamont says he still has the cigar. 'I was thinking I ought to give it back to him. Except his troubles aren’t quite there yet. It’s when he’s Prime Minister he’ll have the problems.’

In 1994, to gain some experience in the commercial world, Cameron left politics and took a job at Carlton, working at the right hand of the company’s chairman, Michael Green, handling corporate affairs. Cameron did not endear himself to journalists; he is variously remembered as being 'imperious’ and 'unhelpful’. One would describe his main job as being to obstruct their questions 'and open the window for Michael Green’s cigar smoke’ – a jibe that says much about the antipathy he generated among the business press, if underselling the considerable skill he demonstrated in handling the famously abrasive and temperamental Green.

In 1997 he took time off from Carlton to fight Stafford for the Tories. 'Stafford,’ as he would later note, 'fought back pretty vigorously.’ But in 2001 he was elected as MP for the safe Tory seat of Witney in west Oxfordshire.

The village where Cameron has his constituency home, near Chipping Norton, is, like his childhood home of Peasemore, another tranquil, gilded corner of England. He says that one of his favourite moments is when he drives up from London on a Friday, and turns off the A34 at Enstone on the last leg of the journey home, with the verdant quilt of the Oxfordshire countryside spread out around him. He and Oliver Letwin often argue about who lives in the more beautiful constituency. 'He lives in west Dorset, so perhaps he just edges it.’

The 2001 election saw the defeat of William Hague. Six days after the election, in an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Cameron set out his stall. The Conservative Party, he said, 'has to change its language, change its approach, start with a blank piece of paper and try to work out why our base support is not broader.’

His personal star rose as the fortunes of the party went from bad to worse. By 2002 he was Shadow Deputy Leader of the House. In 2004 he became Shadow Local Government Minister, and in the following year Shadow Education Secretary. In 2005, following the defeat of Michael Howard – the Tory party’s third consecutive election defeat – at a time when the party’s fortunes were at a low ebb that seemed almost terminal, Cameron made his run for the leadership. He was the rank outsider (behind Kenneth Clarke, Liam Fox and the favourite, David Davis), until the party conference, where he delivered the first of what would become his two celebrated conference speeches, to win over the party. The second was to come two years later, at a time when his standing as leader was at its lowest, and when he famously delivered a rallying speech without the aid of teleprompter or notes (establishing a model for his speechmaking ever since).

Cameron is not, he says, 'a deeply ideological person. I’m a practical person, and pragmatic. I know where I want to get to, but I’m not ideologically attached to one particular method.’

While he has stuled himself as a moderniser, in many ways he is a Conservative of a traditionalist stripe: 'Alec Douglas-Home goes to the Glastonbury Festival’, as a friend once described him.

When I suggest to Cameron that he intended to 'detoxify’ the Tories, he visibly winces. 'I don’t use the phrase because it’s not just as simple as let’s put a lick of fresh paint on an existing car; it’s more a case of taking all the good bits of the old car and building a modern car.’ He talks about 'lighting the touch paper’ to a vision of 'compassionate conservatism’ that is actually part of a deep-seated Conservative tradition of social reform that goes back to Peel and Disraeli.

'I’ve always found it very condescending, this idea that you have to be left-wing in order to be compassionate. I think the Conservatives are deeply compassionate because we understand that the things that actually deliver a more compassionate society are things like families and good schools. The party has modernised and is more in connection with the country it seeks to govern, but the core beliefs that the good society is the responsible society, that government can’t do everything, that communities need to do more together, that is as old as the hills.’

Another Tory grandee describes him as 'a classic one-nation Tory with a modern gloss… I think he has a modern version of the old-fashioned Tory beliefs which is, “We’re better than the other lot because we’re not so statist, and we have a feeling for the traditions of Britain, and we care about the social fabric but we’re not socialists.”

'We’ve got rather used to the idea of beliefs being a very specific, almost aggressive set of things you want done. It’s the model set by Mrs Thatcher where you come out and say things as strongly as you can and you’re quite argumentative all the time. David is not a man who wants to start shouting. His attitude is, “Don’t let’s find the point of division, let’s find the point of unity.”’

None the less, this matter of belief has been a recurring question mark over Cameron. Before meeting him, I spoke to a number of people who all agreed that he was personable, dynamic, attractive, but who invariably posed the same question: what exactly does he believe in?

'Oh God… I know.’ Cameron gives a deep sigh. 'You spend four years telling people what you believe… You know, I’m a very simple, straight­forward, modern Conservative. I believe if you give people more power and control and choices over their lives then they will do amazing things. We need responsibility. That’s it. Give people responsibility, ask people to act more responsibly, reward people when they do behave responsibly; have a government that acts responsibly, doesn’t spend irresponsibly… You can sum me up in a word: responsibility.’

But it is here that the spectre of Tony Blair begins to loom. Looking back on what was written about Cameron immediately before and after his election as party leader in 2005, he was heralded as 'the Tories’ answer to Blair’ – youthful, clever, telegenic – a moderniser who would transform his party, just as Blair had transformed Labour. It is a comparison that, in both its approving and less flattering aspects, has never quite left him.

Gordon Brown may be seen as dark, brooding, tantrum-prone, with all the charm of a speaking clock, but these personality flaws make him appear, in a sense, authentic. The hurdle that Cameron has had to cross is that, like Blair, he can seem a little too smooth and polished – a man whose seamless demeanour may disguise darker traits or an absence of true conviction.

Actually, 'smooth’ and 'polished’ are some of the kinder criticisms that have been levelled at him. I recite some of the unkinder ones, watching Cameron’s response. 'Ruthlessly ambitious’ (a laugh). 'Chauncey Gardiner’, the blank cipher in Hal Ashby’s film Being There (a quizzical grunt). Michael Portillo described him as 'a stream of competence. He always had the phrase, always had the argument and always had the smile’ (another laugh, followed by a long, thoughtful pause).

'I don’t quite know what to say to all that. I think sometimes it’s probably true that because I am quite polished as a speaker or a performer or whatever, people do make too much of that. But all I would say is that if you look at what I’ve said and what I’ve done and what I’ve championed, you see a very clear core of belief, a very clear core of conviction.

'I would argue that the fact I can make a speech without having a sodding great autocue or a lectern or a script is not because I’m a good memory man but because I’m saying what I believe. So all the things you’ve read out, they’re not that wounding. People say these things, but you couldn’t spend four years arguing about the economy, arguing about social breakdown, arguing about real school reform and welfare reform and so on without knowing the details, and without having a passion for getting the policy right.’

When I suggest that perhaps Blair should shoulder some of the blame, Cameron laughs. 'Yes! Let’s blame Tony Blair!

'But it is a fair point. People often say to me, “Well, the trouble is that Blair came along at about your age and said nice things and we believed him, and look where that got us.” An American friend once asked me, “What have you as a political class done to make people in Britain despise and hate politicians so much?” And of course you can’t blame Tony Blair for the whole thing – there’s the expenses scandal, there’s Gordon Brown’s treble counting, there’s Tory sleaze scandals of the past – everyone is to blame. But there is something in that moment in 1997 when the country thought it had got a new, exciting leader, and everything turned out to be not quite as they were told. So let’s blame Blair, that’s a good answer.’

Cameron has a much broader political radar than may be imagined. Driving between Exeter and Bristol, while he busies himself with his papers, the photographer and I talk about a new film on the plight of the indigenous peoples of West Papua, which was annexed by Indonesia in 1969. It’s a place most MPs would probably be hard-pressed to find on a map, but Cameron looks up. 'It’s a terrible situation,’ he says – and one on which he is remarkably well-informed. It transpires that a handful of West Papuan exiles live in Oxford and have come to see him: 'Really lovely people.’

He turns back to his papers, signing off the proof of a party mail-out – 'Anything in my name is cleared by me’ – and scanning a printout of an interview he has recently done with the Angling Times. What, I wonder, is the political angle in that? 'Well, four million people go fishing, so that’s a good start…’

The longer you spend with David Cameron, the more apparent his convictions become, whether it is on the broad-brushstroke issues of 'the Big Society’ or his palpable satisfaction in having achieved his goal of bringing more women and ethnic minorities into the party. But if there is one thing about which he can be said to be evangelical, it is the family – in both the general sense, as the foundation stone of society, as he would put it, and in the personal one.

If Cameron’s background is solid, county upper-middle-class, his wife Samantha’s could be described as landed gentry with a whiff of bohemianism. Her father is Sir Reginald Sheffield, 8th Baronet, whose family lineage can be traced to the Crusades. Her mother, Annabel Jones, was a 1960s It girl. The couple had two daughters, Samantha and Emily, then parted. Annabel married the 4th Viscount Astor, with whom she had three more children. Sir Reginald married Victoria Walker and they too produced three more children – giving rise to a confusion of offspring that is known within the family as 'the Sheffield/Astor gipsy encampment’.

Samantha was a friend of Cameron’s younger sister, Clare, and the pair first met at a party at the Cameron family home when Samantha was 16. But they did not start going out together until five years later, when she was studying art at Bristol and the 25-year-old Cameron was working at the Treasury. 'I would go down and stay with her,’ he remembers, 'and be calling Norman Lamont from the payphone in her student flat while she was down the pub.’

Cameron recalls that he proposed to her at the small flat where he was living in Lansdowne Road, west London, while they were watching a video of Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets. They married in 1996. Samantha, he says, is 'extremely helpful’ as a sounding-board in any political discussions at home. 'She has a good 40,000ft view, because she's not living it all the time like I am. She’s got her own career and the family and everything else. But if you’re grappling with a problem and you’ve seen all the details and outcomes, she’s very good at offering the broad view and saying, “Well, that makes sense and fits with what you believe.”’

Domestically, he says, 'she runs things’. They have never had a joint bank account – 'we just divide things up’ – although he settles the bills, does a lot of the cooking and 'quite a lot of the kiddie stuff… A successful marriage, in the end, I think you’ve got to be best friends as well as a husband and wife and lover and all the rest of it. We just love spending time together. We’ll often have a night in and the phone will ring and we’ll just leave it, and that’s very nice.’

It is probably true to say that the defining event in David Cameron’s life was not school, college, marriage, not election to the leadership of the Conservative Party, but the tragically short life of his first child, Ivan, who suffered from a rare form of cerebral palsy involving severe degenerative seizures, which required his being given 24-hour care, and who died last year at the age of six.

Cameron talks about this with great difficulty. Coping with Ivan, he says, was 'an enormous test, because it’s late nights and broken nights and hospitals and drugs and treatments and all sorts of things you wouldn’t want anyone to go through. But at the same time, you discover what a gift it is, in a way. It’s something you think, “Well, that’s not going to happen to me”, and it does…’ He makes a small, exploding sound. 'And it hits you really hard, and to start with it’s incredibly testing and difficult. And it goes on being testing, because as children like that get older their needs become greater and greater.’

And your frustrations become greater, too?

'Yes. I think you become better at being a parent of a disabled child as you learn all the things that you have to do. But it just becomes tougher in some cases because they get bigger and heavier, so where you could just pick him up and throw him over your shoulder, suddenly it was getting… quite, quite difficult.’

And how was it a gift? 'Because… you know…’ He pauses. 'Because you find so much in the small things they can do that it is wonderful. You know, the smiles you get, and the looks you get.’

He looks away, and an awful silence descends.

A neighbour of Cameron’s in Oxfordshire, who gave him the run of his outdoor pool whenever he wanted to use it, describes how Cameron would spend hours in the water with Ivan, cradling him, and rocking him backwards and forwards. 'It was incredibly moving to watch his patience and love.’

'The whole experience brought several things out,’ Michael Gove says. 'The fact that David and Samantha went through everything together, and the bond and love between them was only strengthened by it all, tells you one thing. The other thing was that David shielded others from what was going on. When he had to cope with all the various crises that meant that Ivan was on the brink, he was stoical throughout and refused to burden other people with it. It is a facet of his Englishness. He just doesn’t think it’s right to offload his grief or difficulties on to other people. He bears them without complaining or raging against his fate.

'I also remember him talking about the care that Ivan received and the support that he had from people. It was more than just being deeply appreciative; there was a profound understanding on his part of how much he owed to the kindness of others. I think it also reinforced his sense of understanding of others’ suffering.’

Politicians do not as a rule have many friends; Cameron is notable for the number he has, of both sexes. He likes to fill the house at weekends with friends and family. If he happens to be at home in Oxfordshire by himself he will often go down to the local pub. 'He’s naturally someone who relaxes in company,’ Gove says. 'There are people who need to spend time on their own in order to recharge their batteries, and people whose batteries are recharged by being around others. He’s the latter.’

Cameron’s tastes are anything but elitist. He enjoys reading 19th- and 20th-century history and political biographies – Race of a Lifetime, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s book about Obama’s presidential campaign, is at his bedside at the moment. He usually reads for 15 or 20 minutes each night before falling asleep – 'Don’t go to bed reading your briefing papers for the next day, that’s not going to help.’ He usually sleeps well, he says. But what weighs on his mind when he doesn’t?

'Not letting people down. I feel a huge responsibility for all the 650 candidates, the hundreds of thousands of supporters who want us to succeed; all the people who are contemplating voting Conservative for the first time. I do feel a huge weight of responsibility on my shoulders to get things right and to make good decisions between now and the election, and to make good decisions afterwards if we win.’

He likes 'boys’ films’ – Carlito’s Way, Where Eagles Dare, The Godfather – which, according to his wife, he can watch over and over again. His musical tastes are resolutely mainstream. Like anyone, the songs he grew up with as a teenager are permanently lodged in the brain – 'You only have to hear the first bar of [Soft Cell’s] Tainted Love and you know exactly where you are’ – but nowadays he has settled into Blur, Radiohead and Pulp, and he is a big fan of Bob Dylan. He chose Tangled up in Blue – 'the live version’ – as one of his Desert Island Discs.

'I’ve been to see him in concert a couple of times. I went to see him at the Hammersmith Odeon, probably 10 years ago, on my own because I couldn’t find any fellow Dylan fans, which is the best way to see him because you don’t have anyone annoying you with questions about why it’s not like the song they thought it was. The great thing about Dylan is that you can go through life discovering things you’ve overlooked. I’ve suddenly started listening to Street Legal – so I keep finding new Dylan albums that I love. It’s a joy.’

In Bristol, the Cameron Direct meeting is being held at a primary school in the north of the city. The prospective parliamentary candidate is, again, a young woman, Charlotte Leslie. He gets straight down to business, grilling her about local issues. 'Remind me, who runs the city council? Henbury Station… am I going to be asked about that?’ The assembly hall is packed to capacity. 'I’m having this Blair-like moment,’ Cameron says. 'I’m taking off my jacket, but don’t read anything into that.’

The reception is warm. But the local paper the following day will note a failing in his attention to detail, pointing out that he had called for some private schools in the city to be given academy status – apparently unaware that two such schools, Colston’s Girls’ School and Bristol Cathedral Choir School, had already been given just that.

A reminder that even the smallest slip will come under scrutiny.

Cameron has been on the road for more than 12 hours; exhaustion is etched on his face. But on the journey back to London there are more briefing papers to be read for tomorrow. Why on earth, I ask him, does he want to be Prime Minister?

'Because I really think this country…’ he breaks off and starts again. 'I’m passionately patriotic, and I passionately believe in public service, and I think I’ve got a fantastic opportunity, with a great team of people and very exciting ideas for getting the country moving and giving people more opportunities to change it. That’s what drives me, that’s what excites me.’

But what makes him think he is uniquely qualified to be Prime Minister?

'I don’t think I’m uniquely qualified; that would be a very arrogant thing to say. I’ve got the ideas, I’ve got the energy, I’ve got the right values. I’m relatively sane and stable.’

And what, I ask, does he consider to be his weaknesses?

There is a long moment’s deliberation.

'I think other people are better placed to identify them. One thing I’ve learnt in the past four years is that you’ve got to go with your own judgment and not put off things that need to be done. You can’t just hope for the right outcome.’

Could he be more specific? Over the course of the day I have found myself warming to Cameron – believing in him, if you like. Diplomatic relations have been firmly established. But now the shutters come down.

'No, I don’t really want to. There are some questions that if you answer them you just create a wall of horror for yourself. Questions like, what are your biggest weaknesses or what would you do if you lose the election. There are some questions you don’t answer for a very good reason.’

Comments: 32

  • Before he was elected as Australia's PM, John Howard claimed to be a Bob Dylan fan [to everybody's amazement]. We finished up in Iraq with Bush. Be careful Britain!

    Phil
    on May 03, 2010 at 11:18 AM
  • It is victory for West Papua Campaign in England that David Cameron's has made a remarkable statement on West Papua in this newspaper. Papuan people hope that British Government will lead the actions in supporting the initiatives to peacefully solve the West Papua Conflict.

    Ottis S.
    on May 03, 2010 at 07:01 AM
  • Dear Sir,
    As an ex-pat American who had the privilege to live in Great Britain, while married to a British subject, I deeply respect the British people and their institutions. Accordingly, British politics is of interest to me; I watched the recent PM debates with the keen interest and focus. As an aside, let me say, while Mr. Gordon Brown’s public gaffe with the pesky widow pensioner about bigotry was regrettable, I respect his view of what he “thought” he heard from her; however, what I don’t respect is that he did not say it (in a polite way) to her face on the street, rather than expressing his thoughts to his overworked Staff in the back seat of his chauffeured Jag while driving away from the scene.
    I have been impressed with the poised and dynamic David Cameron during the runner-up to the election. Also, awhile back (in August 2006) Mr. Cameron impressed me with his views on rectifying a past slight/wrong. Mr. Cameron fessed up to the Tories’ (under Mrs. Thatcher) historical and monumental mistake concerning the ANC (as terrorists), sanctions on South Africa and an ambivalent attitude on apartheid! History also notes that Mrs. Thatcher’s attitudes and views on this matter paralleled (her political soulmate’s), Mr. Reagan. Our President Reagan supported the apartheid government in South Africa and even labeled Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress a notorious terrorist organization.
    So, in a word, thank you Mr. Cameron for your bit on South African history and good luck this coming week. Moreover, Mr. Brown, my condolences to you and the next time you perceive bigotry in a voter, speak out upfront/publicly and directly to the offender on the spot!
    Jack Nesbitt, MBA and Recruiter
    & former Corporate Finance Associate, First Chicago Capital Markets, Chicago, IL
    Welwyn, Herts, England, UK and Jacksonville, Fla, USA

    Jack Nesbitt

    on May 02, 2010 at 05:27 PM
  • Obviously it must be the afternoon of Sunday as all comments have stopped.

    When we wake up to Mr D Cameron party as a winner, remember this from the first Prime Ministerial Debate: --- I will....'cut the size of Whitehall by a third.''' (that's using his own words!)

    That means extensive cuts way and above anything ever seen before. The £6 billion (or 1%) he sees as efficiency savings (which he has already announced) will pale into insignificance. A cut in the size of Whitehall (GOVERNMENT) by a third can only mean cuts in Expenditure and a cut in expenditure of this size must by simple mathematics equate to £200 billion!

    The result of this in the Civil Service and Nationwide in employment will be at least 5 million more unemployment and because the Government is one of the largest purchasers of Services and Goods in the UK it will have serious repercussions across the board. It will not be possible to ring fence all those services he has said he would do for that would simply not work.

    Expect therefore to see Prescription Charges to go up to at least $9-00 (possibly even £10-00!) and Dental Charges to go up. And expect VAT to go up to 20% (a nice round sum to make the calculation easier for all!)

    Think about it!

    Carol
    on May 02, 2010at 05:18 PM

  • Many thanks for all these comments.
    To Rob Bryant @ 6.34.

    I hold no brief for, or against, David Cameron, and I can assure you that Conservative Central Office had absolutely nothing to do with this piece.
    As to your suggestion that the Cameron Direct meetings were barred to the general public, this was not the case at the two I attended. My understanding is that Cameron would hold a separate meeting for party members before the Cameron Direct meetings. That was the case in the meeting I attended at Holmfirth, where Cameron had held a separate meeting earlier that day in Leeds.
    The members of the public I spoke to at Holmfirth had all applied for tickets on an first-come-first-served basis, and reflected a broad swathe of political alleigance, or none.
    In Bristol too it was obvious from the tenor and heat of some of the questions that this was not a 'pre-loaded' audience.

    Mick Brown
    on May 02, 2010 at 05:18 PM
  • Cameron is as two-faced as Brown and Clegg. Remember how Cameron shouted that he and his party were going to be squeaky-clean about parliamentary expenses.

    Well, a Tory peer, Lord Taylor of Warwick, claimed that his home was at his sick mother's house in Brimingham. This allwed him to claim £70,000 in travel and overnight expenses up until 2007. But his mother died in 2001 and her house was sold soon afterwards.

    What has Mr Squeaky-Clean Cameron said about this matter?You're right - absolutely nothing. More pertinately neither have Brown or Clegg, because they know that all of them have far worse skeletons in their cupboards.

    Says it all really, doesn't it?

    Wuffo the Wonder Dog
    on May 02, 2010 at 11:38 AM
  • On balance; there's not a great deal of difference between NuLabour and NuTory. If anything; the Lib/Dems are more pinko than Labour these days.
    DC is competent enough to do the job and I think all these polls which have been punting a hung Parliament will; in the final run-up; edge nearer to the probable outcome which I think could well be an overall Tory majority; albeit of only around 10 seats. The poll results so far have been so divergent as to be ridiculous and none of them will want to be too far from the outcome when the votes are counted.
    Labour think they've overcome GB's monumental gaffe with Gillian Duffy but her fellow Lancastrians are now very likely to abstain - only post-election will we know how many seats that has cost Labour.
    I think the Clegg froth is dissipating as rapidly as it appeared - he's a nice personable chap certainly; but surely the Libs line of making all illegals legal - at a stroke - AND let all those 600 000 invite in another 600 000 of their chums as an added bonus was as big a gaffe as Brown's. Only DC has said something definite about immigration - GB won't have the subject even spoken of - Labour and the Libs' views on this subject are at total variance with the electorate - this IS the No. 1 subject.
    Back to DC - I said competent and as only one indicator; he can handle himself well at PMQs whereas GB is all at sea and NC is just a nice bloke saying nice things.
    If DC is going to be a true Tory; he has to make himself very unpopular as soon as he eases himself into the big chair. Get out the big axe and hack away at everything in sight - stop blaming the wicked banks and the wicked speculators - out of control Government spending is the culprit. DC can do what has to be done and ignore all the red-clad welfare parasites that are bound to hit the streets. Fail to do that and surely Britain will join the queue behind Greece, Portugal, Spain and no doubt a few others as well rattling the old tin cup.
    And as for you MR. DISGRUNTLED; just what the hell's wrong with a bit of the old little-Englander may I ask? Perhaps you relish the thought of being swallowed-up in the EUSSR quasi-MAFIA set-up - you're on yer own there feller!

    Bill South Africa
    on May 02, 2010 at 11:20 AM
  • Cameron is the best of the three, but not by much. I am Tory to the core, but I have reservations with Cameron. He's too far left of centre for my money. A true Tory by definition, must be right of centre. all the conservative MP's know this, but still they chose cameron to lead them. A mistake, had they chosen someone to the right, even a smigion to the right, there would be no doubt in anyone's mind as to which party would be there to drag UK out of the mire. Having said that, I wouldn't hesitate to vote Tory, were I a UK voter.

    Les Hill
    on May 02, 2010 at 10:28 AM
  • Your article shows once again that the Conservative Party leader has come from the same old tired party. When he and his cronies apply for their Wisteria to be cut down at my expense or the Moat House and the married pair who also defrauded us from thousands of pounds how can we trust him. And even now when he has a single financial benefactor (a Lord Ashcroft) who lives as an ex dom busily giving the party £10 million to fight this Election there has to be something wrong...particularly as these should have been Our Taxes.
    How convenient that the Cameron Osborne Hague Pickles clique are VERY VERT quiet here.
    No wonder you can get the country attesting to this man with his glossy coverage of the Press when there is so much money in it.

    Carol
    on May 02, 2010 at 09:47 AM
  • David Cameron will be a nice change. He sounds like he'll do a good job. He gets my vote! Let's vote corruption out!

    katherine wentworth
    on May 02, 2010 at 09:32 AM
  • Like him or loathe him he's the best Prime Minister material of the available three.

    Simon Marshland
    on May 02, 2010 at 08:08 AM
  • I am really looking forward to David Cameron winning the Elections. I am very tired and totally exhausted with the Labour Government over the last 12 or so years in power. Britain needs an urgent change of government and direction. Come what may, it is important the Conservative Party has a complete and total Victory over the other two parties on Thursday. Please people and all who love Britain, vote Conservative, we need a new beginning and that will only come with David Cameron in the Hot Seat. The first year or two will be difficult, but then things will work out. The Country is in a mess, and lots of things have gone wrong that need to be put right, David will not be a mircale worker, but he will do his very best. So please everybody Vote for David Cameron. Thank you all!

    Joy Butler
    on May 02, 2010 at 07:42 AM
  • I know Cameron doesn't support grammar schools, and I know that joke he made at the bread factory showed he has never ever had to worry about how he would manage if he ever lost his job. That's what worries me about him. It's not that he's a toff, (politics is full of toffs, some less obvious than others) it's that he doesn't appear to have any idea of what life is like for those of us that aren't.

    K
    on May 02, 2010 at 07:37 AM
  • Excellent article.David Cameron is obviously the right person for the job of Prime Minister.

    gilmas
    on May 02, 2010 at 06:45 AM
  • It feels like 1987 again, when you watch the "slightly biased" news bulletins. I'm sure something is going on in the background again to ensure a Tory majority. The last thing we need is a repeat of the 80's. RBS will become privately owned, probably within the first month, along with former Railtrack, spelling another future disaster. No thanks, I will not trust the Tories once more, not now, not EVER.

    David
    on May 02, 2010 at 06:42 AM
  • This piece is put out by Conservative Central Office. It says nothing about how the Cameron Direct allegedly 'public meetings' are stage-managed and barred to the general public. They are kept secret until, minutes before Cameron's cavacade arrives, a small notice announcing a 'public' meeting is blue-tacked up and taken down as soon as Cameron is inside. Bouncers are on the doors to prevent any of the public from entering.

    Inside are party researchers, gofers and desperately-smiling prospective party candidates who toss Cameron patsy questions which he answers to rapturous applause.

    Cameron is no different from Brown in avoiding the real public, except that his security screen is more effective in shielding him from the damned public.

    Why is Cameron so scared of meeting the public? Perhaps he's as two-faced as Brown and can't risk being found out as well.

    He won't come to Bromley in Kent where is glove puppet of a candidate is equally shy of being seen in public. In fact, has anyone seen any of the Labour, LibDem or Tory candidates within reach of the real public?

    Thought not.

    Rob Bryant
    on May 02, 2010 at 06:34 AM
  • I think we know a lot about Dave. He's a Liberal radical modernising Conservative in favour of change. He's heir to Blair. He stood on a policy of no tuition fees no small print in 2005 and had some small print - the polciy went. He supported ID cards when Michael Howard supported them. He gave a cast iron garentee of a referendum on the Lisbon treaty then ratted on it.

    He says he's concerned about the poor but his policies all favout the rich. he says all families have had to cut back in recent years, in his cas eon overclaimg on expenses.

    he

    Tom
    on May 01, 2010 at 07:35 PM
  • Irrespective of the results of the election, if David Cameron says 'It’s a terrible situation’ in West Papua then he should at least call for the UK asking the UN International Court of Justice whether the New York Agreement trading West Papua was in violation of UN resolutions or declarations.

    Andrew Johnson
    on May 01, 2010 at 04:09 PM
  • i have so far sent 25 emails and tweets to david cameron and his sec state for media jeremy hunt over the disgracefull actions by the tv licence thugs visiting the baracks of serving troops incl dead troops familys . cameron and hunt havve BOTH REFUSED to condemn this obscenity . hopefully the telegraph can pressure a response from mr cameron and mr hunt over this tv licence baracks visits shame

    karen ross
    on May 01, 2010 at 02:56 PM
  • Excellent profile and very well presented. And to those commenting that not enough was said regarding Cameron's policies; this was intended to be an introduction to the man and his principles, rather than buttoned down party policies, and that's just what we've got. Thank you, Telegraph.

    Independent Brit
    on May 01, 2010 at 02:56 PM
  • I´m verry glad to read that he is interrested in the situation in West Papa, even if he can not win the election on such a topic, because unfortunatly most people in the Western World do not know anything about the terrible bahavior fo the Indonesia military.

    Markus Hagenauer
    on May 01, 2010 at 02:20 PM
  • Thoroughly enjoyed reading this - and it was quite long. I should have made the effort to know this guy Cameron before. No doubt about it - he's up for it, capable enough to do it and do it well; and the best of Scottish luck.

    ARTHUR
    on May 01, 2010 at 02:06 PM
  • This article still doesn't get to the bottom of who he is, it merely says that he's got a few convictions that most good Englishmen have and that he has a lot of talent.
    I need to vote for someone I trust.

    francis
    on May 01, 2010 at 02:05 PM
  • Thanks but I'll take the speaking clock

    Aaron C
    on May 01, 2010 at 12:36 PM
  • I had to stop reading when I had a sudden impulse to put two fingers down my throat.

    This was in response to "David knows more about the fine detail of policy than anyone in the party" and "He doesn’t duck awkward questions".

    If either of these were true, why were they so visibly absent during the debates?

    Having recovered from the urge to gag, I can now say that this piece belongs in a magazine for the vacuous, but that it will need chopping down to a size that those brains can accommodate. Perhaps just the first ten paragraphs.

    David
    on May 01, 2010 at 12:24 PM
  • its a shame that Cameron is getting big headed when seeing himself ahead of the polls which i don't know how they are getting those figures.I'll tell u something Cameron supporters,its like an F1 race with a tractor leading & u got mercedes & ferraris following behind.There r a lot of Labour supporters out there who r just quite & watching this nonsense.U know Labour's policies r beta than all this jokers but u just hating on Brown.The truth is there r a lot of haters out there

    pablo torreta
    on May 01, 2010 at 11:49 AM
  • Cameron is entirely well known compared with Obama, who is a complete cypher.

    Willy Nilly
    on May 01, 2010 at 11:49 AM
  • I don't usually read any news articles as I prefer to form my own opinion of someone before I judge them, but this piece is particularly well written and I couldn't stop reading.

    It's sad that people pick up every little detail and pick away at it, but everybody has their faults, nobody is perfect etc.

    I think Cameron is the right man for the job.

    Rhinne
    on May 01, 2010 at 10:27 AM
  • How well do I know David Cameron? I know I am irritated by his constant repetition of vacuuous platitudes and his cynical lack of policies. I am also deeply concerned about his judgement, as he appears to harbour a little-Englander attitude and his loyalty to his gaffe prone, discredited would be chancellor smacks of cronyism. Hung parliament please!

    Disgruntled!
    on May 01, 2010 at 10:23 AM
  • What a shame that you didn't ask DC the key question. If this government is so unpopular, and if the country is desperately wanting change, and if he has had 4 years to sell his message, why aren't the Tories on line for a landslide? Maybe people don't think the Tories have changed as much as DC would like to believe. Wars, rising unemployment, enormous debt, and we still don't trust the Tories. If I was in his position, I am pretty sure it would be that fact that would keep me awake at night.

    Brian Poxon
    on May 01, 2010 at 10:21 AM
  • Very interesting, thank you. Could DC be a Gemini? You haven't said.

    davidw
    on May 01, 2010 at 09:11 AM
  • Another ghastly puff piece edited by Tory central office for it's pr newspaper.

    One only needs to look at how Cameron treats local conservative associations by parachuting candidates inagainst their will to get a good measure of him and his deeply insecure personality. As a result when people go to vote next week many of the conservative candidates will have address outside constituency next to their name. Big society pah.

    Simon turnip
    on May 01, 2010 at 09:08 AM
Source: telegraph.co.uk