Cameron: the rise of the new Conservative
Francis Elliott & James Hanning
Harper Perennial
368pp
£8.99

When Maurice Fraser met a 25-year-old David Cameron – then on a comfortable ascent up the Eton-Oxford-Conservative research department trajectory – he was convinced he had encountered a future leader of the Conservative party.

‘His social skills – which generally come to people later on – were extraordinarily keenly honed in someone of 25,’ recalls Fraser. ‘A lot of people were clever, others were perfectly solid but more pedestrian, but he had judgement – he was political to his fingertips – he always knew what you could say and what you couldn’t.’

Francis Elliot and James Hanning’s biography of that 25-year-old, recently out in paperback, charts Cameron’s course to becoming Conservative leader. Updated to include more recent events (such as last summer’s ‘yachtgate’ saga and the Tory reaction to the financial crisis), it may well become the definitive biography of a future prime minister, in the vain of John Rentoul’s Tony Blair – largely sympathetic, but no less insightful for it.

Elliot and Hanning describe a materially privileged and emotionally secure childhood, raised by wealthy, church-going – and thoroughly Conservative – parents. While many were impressed with the young Cameron’s self-confidence and amiability, the future Tory leader was a late developer, only starting to academically excel during his A-levels and surprising many when he won a place at Oxford to read PPE.

Cameron’s time at university is notable for its lack of any political involvement. While future political colleagues and rivals cut their teeth at the Oxford Union, he was more preoccupied with his studies (‘I do remember being impressed and slightly alarmed by how focused he was,’ recalls one peer) and with romance (going out with ‘some absolute crackers’, according to another). And, of course, his now infamous participation in the Bullingdon Club, which his biographers claim was a little too raucous for the civilised young Cameron who would retire to bed before the aristocratic vandalism got going.

What is most striking about the account of Cameron’s early days is the absence of any developing ideological driving force or deep-rooted convictions. It is well known that Cameron’s upbringing was cocooned from the kind of poverty and suffering that Gordon Brown’s ‘son of the Manse’ childhood brought him into contact with. Rather, what appears to have driven Cameron’s interest in politics was, in the words of one friend, ‘an attraction to power’.

This attraction to power – along with an intense interest in the machinations of politics that helped him achieve a 1st class degree – took Cameron to the Conservative research department, where he quickly impressed and rose to head up the political section. It was also, Elliott and Hanning point out, where he formed important political friendships with, among others, Steve Hilton and Ed Vaizey, as well as immersing him in the 1992 general election campaign, an experience key to his political development. ‘Cameron had been tested in the heat of battle and remained victorious.’

More testing was to come Cameron’s way, however, when he became a special adviser to Norman Lamont. The book contains a photo of a pale-faced young Cameron looking on as the then chancellor announces Britain’s humiliating withdrawal from the ERM. Elliott and Hanning’s account of the events leading up to Black Wednesday is one of the book’s most gripping chapters, given added colour by interviews with the key players (Lamont tells of receiving a foot-long cigar from his young adviser just before Black Wednesday and being told ‘By the time you have smoked all of this, all your troubles will be over’).
Cameron’s stint at the Treasury may well have contributed to his Euroscepticism, the authors note, as well as giving him a taste of the downsides of power.

The book’s description of the future Tory leader’s road to the Commons shows how determined he was to enter parliament: failing to get elected to Stafford, a defeat that put an end to ‘the puppyish self-possession of the arrogant twenty-something Cameron’.

Finally securing the safe seat of Witney and entering parliament in 2001, the book provides some fascinating insights into Cameron’s political development. He ‘was a late and reluctant convert to the cause of modernisation’ and as recently as 2003 had failed to support the repeal of Section 28 – again indicating that his progressive talk likely owes more to political expediency than principle.

The runup to Cameron’s election as leader in 2005 makes for compelling reading, the authors capturing brilliantly the rise of the underdog, daring to take on David Davis’s bullying and inept campaign. It was at this stage that Cameron’s Eton self-assuredness and communication skills – honed during seven years at Carlton Communications – came to the fore. Taking the high-risk decision to speak without notes at the Tory conference lent him authenticity, and resulted in an instant surge in popularity among the party’s grassroots.
The book’s account of Cameron’s first three years as leader is relatively short, and likely continue to be updated as his career continues – be it to Downing Street or, as Labour supporters would no doubt prefer, back into the political wilderness.