Word: cameronism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Much of Cameron's strength derives from self-belief: not the fragile veneer of assurance acquired or affected by most politicians but a deep-down certainty that protects him from dark nights of the soul. "There's no massive thing I've done [where] I lie awake thinking I wish I'd never done that," he says. From a stable, loving family, sent to a school that instills a sense of entitlement in even its dullest pupils, Cameron seems never to have doubted that he was destined for great things. "He came to Oxford equipped with a much more complete...
...What he's got is mind-blowing confidence. He doesn't do doubt," says Nick Marcq, a filmmaker and godfather to the Camerons' youngest son. Another defining characteristic, says Marcq, is Cameron's formidable willpower. He recalls that Cameron once challenged him to an underwater race in a 50-m-long swimming pool during a family holiday. "I must have got 10 m before I came up because my heart was about to pop. He went...
...things through is now being applied to his own party. "David took a much stronger line than I did in [the leadership contest]," says David Davis. "He would use a word like detoxifying the party. He thought that was the predominant mission, and arguably he was right." That meant Cameron ditching some of his own bred-in-the-bone leanings toward social conservatism. In 2003 Cameron opposed the repeal of 1988 legislation banning local authorities and schools from "promoting" homosexuality. He now says his earlier stance was a mistake...
Pollsters say voters buy the idea of Cameron as a warm and caring man but aren't so sure about his party. The Conservatives have to persuade voters that they all abjure outdated and moralistic views. That's why Cameron is quick to crack down on signs of prejudice in his own ranks. He removed Patrick Mercer as a shadow minister after the ex-army officer suggested in an interview that "some ethnic minority soldiers ... used racism as a cover for their misdemeanors." A Tory insider says Cameron "rushed to judgment." Mercer, however, is magnanimous: "I completely support the mainstream...
...World Is His Oyster IT'S TIME FOR CHANGE, CHANGE YOU CAN TRUST - it's hard to miss the similarities between Cameron's slogans and Barack Obama's variations on the change theme: THE CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN, THE CHANGE WE NEED. They share a rhetoric based on the same assumptions that "the national mood isn't to have an old lag who's been around in politics for 20 years. People want generational change." That's Willetts describing Cameron, but it might just as well be Joe Biden talking about Obama...