David William Donald Cameron

David Cameron

 

 

 

David William Donald Cameron (pronunciation: /ˈkæmᵊrən/; born 9 October 1966) is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service and Leader of the Conservative Party. He represents Witney as its Member of Parliament (MP).[1]

Cameron studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at Oxford, gaining a first class honours degree. He then joined the Conservative Research Department and became Special Adviser to Norman Lamont, and then to Michael Howard. He was Director of Corporate Affairs at Carlton Communications for seven years.

He was defeated in his first candidacy for Parliament at Stafford in 1997, but was elected in 2001 as the Member of Parliament for the Oxfordshire constituency of Witney. He was promoted to the Opposition front bench two years later, and rose rapidly to become head of policy co-ordination during the 2005 general election campaign. With a public image of a youthful, moderate candidate who would appeal to young voters, he won the Conservative leadership election in 2005.[2]

In the 2010 general election held on 6 May, the Conservatives won 307 seats in a hung parliament. After five days of intense negotiations, Cameron formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. The 43-year-old Cameron became the youngest British Prime Minister since the Earl of Liverpool 198 years earlier.[3] Cameron leads the first coalition government of the United Kingdom since the Second World War. He is ranked as the world's 10th most powerful person by the Forbes magazine.

    Family

 

David Cameron is the younger son of stockbroker Ian Donald Cameron (12 October 1932 – 8 September 2010)[5] and his wife Mary Fleur (née Mount, born 1934,[6] a retired Justice of the Peace, daughter of Sir William Mount, 2nd Baronet).[7] His father, Ian, was born with both legs deformed and underwent repeated operations to correct them. Cameron's parents were married on 20 October 1962.[6] He was born in London, and brought up in Peasemore, Berkshire.[8] Cameron has a brother, Allan Alexander (born 1963, a barrister and QC)[9] and two sisters, Tania Rachel (born 1965) and Clare Louise (born 1971).[6][10] His father was born at Blairmore House, a country house near Huntly, Aberdeenshire, and died near Toulon, in France, on 8 September 2010.[11] Blairmore was built by his great-great-grandfather, Alexander Geddes,[12] who had made a fortune in the grain trade in Chicago, and returned to Scotland in the 1880s.[13] He is eighth cousin of Donald Cameron, the present Chief of Clan Cameron.

Through his paternal grandmother, Enid Agnes Maud Levita, Cameron is a lineal descendant of King William IV by his mistress Dorothea Jordan. This illegitimate line consists of five generations of women starting with Elizabeth Hay, Countess of Erroll, née FitzClarence, William and Jordan's sixth child,[14] through to Cameron's grandmother (thereby making Cameron a 5th cousin of Queen Elizabeth II).[15] Cameron's paternal forebears also have a long history in finance. His father Ian was senior partner of the stockbrokers Panmure Gordon, in which firm partnerships had long been held by Cameron's ancestors, including David's grandfather and great-grandfather,[10] and was a Director of estate agent John D. Wood. David Cameron's great-great grandfather Emile Levita, a German Jewish financier (and descendant of Renaissance scholar Elia Levita), who obtained British citizenship in 1871, was the director of the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China which became Standard Chartered Bank in 1969.[15] His wife, Cameron's great-great grandmother, was a descendant of the wealthy Danish Jewish Rée family on her father's side.[16][17] One of Emile's sons, Arthur Francis Levita (died 1910, brother of Sir Cecil Levita),[18] of Panmure Gordon stockbrokers, together with great-great-grandfather Sir Ewen Cameron,[19] London head of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, played key roles in arranging loans supplied by the Rothschilds to the Japanese Central Banker (later Prime Minister) Takahashi Korekiyo for the financing of the Japanese Government in the Russo-Japanese war.

 

Cameron's maternal grandfather was Sir William Mount, 2nd Baronet, an Army officer who served as High Sheriff of Berkshire, and Cameron's maternal great-grandfather was Sir William Mount, 1st Baronet, CBE, Conservative MP for Newbury 1918–1922. Cameron's great-great grandmother was Lady Ida Matilda Alice Feilding. His great-great-great grandfather was William Feilding, 7th Earl of Denbigh, GCH, PC, a courtier and Gentleman of the Bedchamber.[21] His mother's cousin, Sir Ferdinand Mount, was head of 10 Downing Street's Policy Unit in the early 1980s. Cameron is the nephew of Sir William Dugdale, brother-in-law of Katherine, Lady Dugdale (died 2004) Lady-in-Waiting to HM The Queen since 1955,[22][23] and former Chairman of Aston Villa Football Club. Birmingham-born documentary filmmaker Joshua Dugdale is his cousin.[24]

 

Cameron has said: "On my mother's side of the family, her mother was a Llewellyn, so Welsh. I'm a real mixture of Scottish, Welsh and English".

Education

 

Chapel of Eton College

 

From the age of seven, Cameron was educated at two independent schools: at Heatherdown Preparatory School at Winkfield, in Berkshire, which counts Prince Andrew and Prince Edward among its alumni. Due to good academic grades, Cameron entered its top academic class almost two years early.[26] At the age of thirteen, he went to Eton College in Berkshire, following his father and elder brother.[27] His early interest was in art. Six weeks before taking his O-Levels he was caught smoking cannabis.[2] He admitted the offence and had not been involved in selling drugs, so he was not expelled, but was fined, prevented from leaving school grounds, and given a "Georgic" (a punishment which involved copying 500 lines of Latin text).[28]

 

Cameron passed 12 O-levels, and then studied three A-Levels in History of Art, History and Economics with Politics. He obtained three 'A' grades and a '1' grade in the Scholarship Level exam in Economics and Politics.[29] The following autumn he passed the entrance exam for Oxford University, where he was offered an exhibition.[30]

 

After leaving Eton in 1984,[31] Cameron started a nine-month gap year. He worked as a researcher for Tim Rathbone, Conservative MP for Lewes, his godfather. In his three months he attended debates in the House of Commons.[32] Through his father, he was then employed for a further three months in Hong Kong by Jardine Matheson as a 'ship jumper', an administrative post.

Returning from Hong Kong he visited the then Soviet Union, where he was approached by two Russian men speaking fluent English. Cameron was later told by one of his professors that it was 'definitely an attempt' by the KGB to recruit him.

 

Cameron then began his Bachelor of Arts studies in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) at Brasenose College, Oxford.[35] His tutor, Professor Vernon Bogdanor, described him as "one of the ablest"[36] students he has taught, with "moderate and sensible Conservative" political views.[10] Guy Spier, who shared tutorials with him, remembers him as an outstanding student; "We were doing our best to grasp basic economic concepts. David - there was nobody else who came even close. He would be integrating them with the way the British political system is put together. He could have lectured me on it, and I would have sat there and taken notes.."[37] When commenting in 2006 on his former pupil's ideas about a "Bill of Rights" to replace the Human Rights Act, however, Professor Bogdanor, himself a Liberal Democrat, said, "I think he is very confused. I've read his speech and it's filled with contradictions. There are one or two good things in it but one glimpses them, as it were, through a mist of misunderstanding".[38]

 

While at Oxford, Cameron was a member of the élite student dining society, the Bullingdon Club, with a reputation for an outlandish drinking culture associated with boisterous behaviour and damaging property.[39] A photograph showing Cameron in a tailcoat with other members of this exclusive club, including Boris Johnson, surfaced in 2007, but was later withdrawn by the copyright holder.[40] Cameron's period in the Bullingdon Club was examined in a Channel 4 docu-drama, When Boris Met Dave, broadcast on 7 October 2009.[41] His friends outside the Bullingdon Club included fellow PPE student Catherine Fall. Cameron graduated in 1988 with a first class honours degree (MA).[42]

 

Early political career

 

After graduation, Cameron worked for the Conservative Research Department between September 1988[43] and 1993. A feature on Cameron in The Mail on Sunday on 18 March 2007 reported that on the day he was due to attend a job interview at Conservative Central Office, a phone call was received from Buckingham Palace. The male caller stated, "I understand you are to see David Cameron. I've tried everything I can to dissuade him from wasting his time on politics but I have failed. I am ringing to tell you that you are about to meet a truly remarkable young man."[44]

 

In 1991, Cameron was seconded to Downing Street to work on briefing John Major for his then bi-weekly session of Prime Minister's Questions. One newspaper gave Cameron the credit for "sharper [...] despatch box performances" by Major,[45] which included highlighting for Major "a dreadful piece of doublespeak" by Tony Blair (then the Labour Employment spokesman) over the effect of a national minimum wage.[46] He became head of the political section of the Conservative Research Department, and in August 1991 was tipped to follow Judith Chaplin as Political Secretary to the Prime Minister.[47]

 

However, Cameron lost to Jonathan Hill, who was appointed in March 1992. He was given the responsibility for briefing Major for his press conferences during the 1992 general election.[48] During the campaign, Cameron was one of the young "brat pack" of party strategists who worked between 12 and 20 hours a day, sleeping in the house of Alan Duncan in Gayfere Street, Westminster, which had been Major's campaign headquarters during his bid for the Conservative leadership.[49] Cameron headed the economic section; it was while working on this campaign that Cameron first worked closely with Steve Hilton, who was later to become Director of Strategy during his party leadership.[50] The strain of getting up at 4:45 am every day was reported to have led Cameron to decide to leave politics in favour of journalism.[51]

Special Adviser to the Chancellor

 

The Conservatives' unexpected success in the 1992 election led Cameron to hit back at older party members who had criticised him and his colleagues, saying "whatever people say about us, we got the campaign right," and that they had listened to their campaign workers on the ground rather than the newspapers. He revealed he had led other members of the team across Smith Square to jeer at Transport House, the former Labour headquarters.[52] Cameron was rewarded with a promotion to Special Adviser to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Norman Lamont.[53]

 

Cameron was working for Lamont at the time of Black Wednesday, when pressure from currency speculators forced the Pound sterling out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. At the 1992 Conservative Party conference, Cameron had difficulty trying to arrange to brief the speakers in the economic debate, having to resort to putting messages on the internal television system imploring the mover of the motion, Patricia Morris, to contact him.[54] Later that month Cameron joined a delegation of Special Advisers who visited Germany to build better relations with the Christian Democratic Union; he was reported to be "still smarting" over the Bundesbank's contribution to the economic crisis.[55]

 

Lamont fell out with John Major after Black Wednesday and became highly unpopular with the public. Taxes needed to be raised in the 1993 Budget, and Cameron fed the options Lamont was considering through to Conservative Central Office for their political acceptability to be assessed.[56] However, Lamont's unpopularity did not necessarily affect Cameron: he was considered as a potential "kamikaze" candidate for the Newbury by-election, which includes the area where he grew up.[57] However, Cameron decided not to stand.

 

During the by-election, Lamont gave the response "Je ne regrette rien" to a question about whether he most regretted claiming to see "the green shoots of recovery" or admitted "singing in his bath" with happiness at leaving the ERM. Cameron was identified by one journalist as having inspired this gaffe; it was speculated that the heavy Conservative defeat in Newbury may have cost Cameron his chance of becoming Chancellor himself, even though as he was not a Member of Parliament he could not have been.[58] Lamont was sacked at the end of May 1993, and decided not to write the usual letter of resignation; Cameron was given the responsibility to issue to the press a statement of self-justification.[59]

Special Adviser to the Home Secretary

 

The Home Office building Cameron worked at during the 1990s

 

After Lamont was sacked, Cameron remained at the Treasury for less than a month before being specifically recruited by Home Secretary Michael Howard; it was commented that he was still "very much in favour".[60] It was later reported that many at the Treasury would have preferred Cameron to carry on.[61] At the beginning of September 1993, Cameron applied to go on Conservative Central Office's list of Prospective Parliamentary Candidates.[62]

 

According to Derek Lewis, then Director-General of Her Majesty's Prison Service, Cameron showed him a "his and hers list" of proposals made by Howard and his wife, Sandra. Lewis said that Sandra Howard's list included reducing the quality of prison food, although Sandra Howard denied this claim. Lewis reported that Cameron was "uncomfortable" about the list.[63] In defending Sandra Howard and insisting that she made no such proposal, the journalist Bruce Anderson wrote that Cameron had proposed a much shorter definition on prison catering which revolved around the phrase "balanced diet", and that Lewis had written thanking Cameron for a valuable contribution.[64]

 

During his work for Howard, Cameron often briefed the media. In March 1994, someone leaked to the Press that the Labour Party had called for a meeting with John Major to discuss a consensus on the Prevention of Terrorism Act. After an inquiry failed to find the source of the leak, Labour MP Peter Mandelson demanded assurance from Howard that Cameron had not been responsible, which Howard gave.[65][66] A senior Home Office Civil Servant noted the influence of Howard's Special Advisers, saying previous incumbents "would listen to the evidence before making a decision. Howard just talks to young public school gentlemen from the party headquarters."[67]

Carlton

 

In July 1994, Cameron left his role as Special Adviser to work as the Director of Corporate Affairs at Carlton Communications.[68] Carlton, which had won the ITV franchise for London weekdays in 1991, was a growing media company which also had film distribution and video producing arms. In 1997, Cameron played up the Company's prospects for digital terrestrial television, for which it joined with Granada television and BSkyB to form British Digital Broadcasting.[69] In a roundtable discussion on the future of broadcasting in 1998 he criticised the effect of overlapping different regulators on the industry.[70]

 

Carlton's consortium did win the digital terrestrial franchise but the resulting company suffered difficulties in attracting subscribers. In 1999, the Express on Sunday claimed Cameron had rubbished one of its stories which had given an accurate number of subscribers, because he wanted the number to appear higher than expected.[71] Cameron resigned as Director of Corporate Affairs in February 2001 in order to fight for election to Parliament, although he remained on the payroll as a consultant.[72]

Parliamentary candidacy

 

Stafford, the constituency Cameron contested in 1997

 

Having been approved for the Candidates' list, Cameron began looking for a seat. He was reported to have missed out on selection for Ashford in December 1994 after failing to get to the selection meeting as a result of train delays.[73] In early 1996, he was selected for Stafford, a new constituency created by boundary changes, which was projected to have a Conservative majority.[74] At the 1996 Conservative Party Conference he called for tax cuts in the forthcoming Budget to be targeted at the low-paid and to "small businesses where people took money out of their own pockets to put into companies to keep them going".[75] He also said the Party "should be proud of the Tory tax record but that people needed reminding of its achievements ... It's time to return to our tax-cutting agenda. The socialist Prime Ministers of Europe have endorsed Tony Blair because they want a federal pussy cat and not a British lion."[76]

 

When writing his election address, Cameron made his own opposition to British membership of the single European currency clear, pledging not to support it. This was a break with official Conservative policy but about 200 other candidates were making similar declarations.[77] Otherwise, Cameron kept closely to the national party line. He also campaigned using the claim that a Labour Government would increase the cost of a pint of beer by 24p; however, the Labour candidate, David Kidney, portrayed Cameron as "a right-wing Tory". Stafford had a swing almost the same as the national swing, which made it one of the many seats to fall to Labour: David Kidney had a majority of 4,314.[78][79] In the round of selection contests taking place in the run-up to the 2001 general election, Cameron again attempted to be selected for a winnable seat. He tried out for the Kensington and Chelsea seat after the death of Alan Clark,[80] but did not make the shortlist.

 

He was in the final two but narrowly lost at Wealden in March 2000,[81] a loss ascribed by Samantha Cameron to his lack of spontaneity when speaking.[82]

 

On 4 April 2000 Cameron was selected as prospective candidate (PPC) for Witney in Oxfordshire. This had been a safe Conservative seat but its sitting MP Shaun Woodward (who had worked with Cameron on the 1992 election campaign) had "crossed the floor" to join the Labour Party; newspapers claimed Cameron and Woodward had "loathed each other",[83] although Cameron's biographers Francis Elliott and James Hanning describe them as being "on fairly friendly terms".[84] Cameron, advised in his strategy by friend Catherine Fall, put a great deal of effort into "nursing" his potential constituency, turning up at social functions, and attacking Woodward for changing his mind on fox hunting to support a ban.[85]

 

During the election campaign, Cameron accepted the offer of writing a regular column for The Guardian's online section.[86] He won the seat with a 1.9% swing to the Conservatives and a majority of 7,973.[87][88]

Member of Parliament

 

Upon his election to Parliament, he served as a member of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, a prominent appointment for a newly elected MP. Cameron proposed that the Committee launch an inquiry into the law on drugs,[89] and urged the consideration of "radical options".[90] The report recommended a downgrading of Ecstasy from Class A to Class B, as well as moves towards a policy of 'harm reduction', which Cameron defended.[91]

 

Cameron determinedly attempted to increase his public visibility, offering quotations on matters of public controversy. He opposed the payment of compensation to Gurbux Singh, who had resigned as head of the Commission for Racial Equality after a confrontation with the police;[92] and commented that the Home Affairs Select Committee had taken a long time to discuss whether the phrase "black market" should be used.[93] However, he was passed over for a front-bench promotion in July 2002; Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith did invite Cameron and his ally George Osborne to coach him on Prime Minister's Questions in November 2002. The next week, Cameron deliberately abstained in a vote on allowing same-sex and unmarried couples to adopt children jointly, against a whip to oppose; his abstention was noted.[94] The wide scale of abstentions and rebellious votes destabilised the Duncan Smith leadership.

 

In June 2003, Cameron was appointed a shadow minister in the Privy Council Office as a deputy to Eric Forth, then Shadow Leader of the House. He also became a vice-chairman of the Conservative Party when Michael Howard took over the leadership in November of that year. He was appointed Opposition frontbench local government spokesman in 2004, before being promoted to the shadow cabinet that June as head of policy co-ordination. Later, he became Shadow Education Secretary in the post-election reshuffle.[95]

 

 

From February 2002[96] to August 2005 he was a non-executive director of Urbium PLC, operator of the Tiger Tiger bar chain.[97]

Leadership of the Conservative Party

 

David Cameron campaigning for the 2006 local elections in Newcastle upon Tyne

Leadership election

Main article: Conservative Party (UK) leadership election, 2005

 

Following the Labour victory in the May 2005 general election, Michael Howard announced his resignation as leader of the Conservative Party and set a lengthy timetable for the leadership election. Cameron announced on 29 September 2005 that he would be a candidate. Parliamentary colleagues supporting him included Boris Johnson, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne, Shadow Defence Secretary and deputy leader of the party Michael Ancram, Oliver Letwin[98] and former party leader William Hague.[99] His campaign did not gain wide support until his speech, delivered without notes, at the 2005 Conservative Party Conference. In the speech he vowed to make people "feel good about being Conservatives again" and said he wanted "to switch on a whole new generation."[100]

 

In the first ballot of Conservative MPs on 18 October 2005, Cameron came second, with 56 votes, slightly more than expected; David Davis had fewer than predicted at 62 votes; Liam Fox came third with 42 votes; and Kenneth Clarke was eliminated with 38 votes. In the second ballot on 20 October 2005, Cameron came first with 90 votes; David Davis was second, with 57; and Liam Fox was eliminated with 51 votes.[101] All 198 Conservative MPs voted in both ballots.

 

The next stage of the election process, between Davis and Cameron, was a vote open to the entire party membership. Cameron was elected with more than twice as many votes as Davis and more than half of all ballots issued; Cameron won 134,446 votes on a 78% turnout, to Davis's 64,398.[102] Although Davis had initially been the favourite, it was widely acknowledged that his candidacy was marred by a disappointing conference speech.[103] Cameron had made a well-received speech without notes (which The Daily Telegraph said "showed a sureness and a confidence that is greatly to his credit").[104] Cameron's election as the Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition was announced on 6 December 2005. As is customary for an Opposition leader not already a member, upon election Cameron became a member of the Privy Council, being formally approved to join on 14 December 2005, and sworn of the Council on 8 March 2006.[105]

 

Cameron's appearance on the cover of Time in September 2008 was said by the Daily Mail to present him to the world as 'Prime Minister in waiting'.[106]

Reaction to Cameron as leader

 

Cameron being interviewed at the headquarters of Oxfam in 2006

 

Cameron's relative youth and inexperience before becoming leader have invited satirical comparison with Tony Blair. Private Eye soon published a picture of both leaders on its front cover, with the caption "World's first face transplant a success".[107] On the left, the New Statesman unfavourably likened his "new style of politics" to Tony Blair's early leadership years.[108] Cameron was accused of paying excessive attention to image: ITV News broadcast footage from the 2006 Conservative Party Conference in Bournemouth showing him wearing four different sets of clothes within a few hours.[109] Cameron was characterised in a Labour Party political broadcast as "Dave the Chameleon", who would change what he said to match the expectations of his audience. Cameron later claimed that the broadcast had become his daughter's "favourite video".[110] He has also been described by comedy writer and broadcaster Charlie Brooker as being "like a hollow Easter egg with no bag of sweets inside" in his Guardian column.[111]

 

 

On the right, Norman Tebbit, former Chairman of the Conservative Party, likened Cameron to Pol Pot, "intent on purging even the memory of Thatcherism before building a New Modern Compassionate Green Globally Aware Party".[112] Quentin Davies MP, who defected from the Conservatives to Labour on 26 June 2007, branded him "superficial, unreliable and [with] an apparent lack of any clear convictions" and stated that David Cameron had turned the Conservative Party's mission into a "PR agenda".[113] Traditionalist conservative columnist and author Peter Hitchens has written, "Mr Cameron has abandoned the last significant difference between his party and the established left", by embracing social liberalism[114] and has dubbed the party under his leadership "Blue Labour", a pun on New Labour.[115] Cameron responded by calling Hitchens a "maniac".[116] Daily Telegraph correspondent and blogger Gerald Warner has been particularly scathing about Cameron's leadership, arguing that it is alienating traditionalist conservative elements from the Conservative Party.[117]