Word: camerons
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...pillar of British political science that governments lose elections; oppositions don't win them. Cameron wants to topple it. "When a government is in trouble, an opposition party's main task is not to be unelectable. What David Cameron has achieved - and it's a massive achievement - is to make the Tories electable," says Peter Kellner, president of polling organization YouGov. "One of the things Cameron has understood better than his predecessors is that when people form judgments about politicians and parties, it's on the whole not a judgment about their policies; it's a judgment about what sort...
...takes questions in Loughborough or chats to trainees learning to strip down truck engines at an apprenticeship scheme in the neighboring constituency, that's exactly how Cameron comes across. It's cleverly pitched. He doesn't conceal his heritage (or flatten his upper-class accent); he finesses it. His interlocutors don't feel patronized - they sense that he understands them and cares about what they care about...
Compassion and empathy were the last qualities associated with the Conservative Party when Cameron launched his leadership campaign. Labour had been able to capitalize on the benefits of harsh economic reforms pushed through by Thatcher while continuing to blame their human cost on her. In opposition, the Tories floundered, running through three successive leaders who all tried and failed to woo voters with populist, right-wing rhetoric...
...nice a person could never have transformed the nasty party. It required some iron in the soul for Cameron to face down traditionalists who accused him of betraying Conservative values. That metal is well concealed. Peter Sinclair, his Oxford economics professor, says, "We've had rather few Prime Ministers who've been as intellectually able as David," but recalls that his student (who, he says, won "a sparkling first") was "keen not to show up other people." A similar tribute comes from Vernon Bogdanor, professor of government at Oxford: "He was one of the nicest and ablest pupils I ever...
...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...