Tonight:
4°c
Oh glorious Tory day in Totnes: the Devon seat involuntarily vacated by Sir Anthony Steen, who thought the fuss about expenses all boiled down to plebeian jealously, has just selected David Cameron's new model candidate.
She's a GP — tick box for new caring approach to the NHS — fresh-faced and with no embarrassing political history to taint Brand Dave.
Sarah Wollaston was chosen in the first open primary contest, allowing non-party members to select a new candidate, emphasising that the new Conservative Party is open to all, not just people who live in old rectories who went to university with the leader.
With some 15,000 people voting, as opposed to the usual handful of activists in a grim church hall, Labour will be hard pressed to cavil that it is a mere stunt. Primaries are not the whole answer to improving our moribund politics. But they are a valuable instrument in prising open processes which tend to end up dominated by existing activists.
Nothing could be more important to Mr Cameron, who is spending this summer applying a large sticking plaster to cultural and social rifts in his ranks which have widened, paradoxically, the closer he gets to bringing the Conservatives back to power.
Look to Michael Gove, in his role of the leadership's St John the Evangelist, declaring that David Davis, Mr Cameron's old leadership rival and front bench apostate, is a “brilliant communicator ... a great asset” who should be brought back to the top line-up. For good measure, he extends another bouquet to Liam Fox, the other vanquished candidate for the top job and self-styled “leader of the Right”, mooting that he, too, could have the qualities to be leader one day.
This latter point is manipulative mush. The Tory party has a very odd habit of appointing its leaders in advance — only to declare them the wrong fit when the time comes.
Mr Cameron is young, energetic and gifted, and faces a Labour Party in serious decline. Unless he mucks it up, he can realistically hope to serve two terms. By which time, those perennial “next leaders” — including the incurably ambitious Boris Johnson — will most likely look well past their rave-by dates.
What Camp Cameron is tacitly admitting, however, is that there is deep distrust and dislike between different groups of the party and that it needs to be addressed before differences become schisms.
It is about experience, style, way of life — and sometimes conviction, too. Mr Cameron did not mind Mr Davis flouncing around talking about the over-weening state — there was no threat to him in that. But he is deeply worried by a charismatic figure openly supporting a return to selection and bemoaning the failure to restore grammar schools. On these issues, Mr Davis is far closer to the party's instincts than its leader.
Similarly, Mr Fox adheres all the more purposefully to the nobility of the Afghan mission, the more Mr Cameron sounds doubtful about its aims. A spending row with Mr Osborne on defence is an accident waiting to happen. If it does, better to have it with Mr Fox on personally benign terms with the leadership than in a strop.
Let's not underestimate either the social chasm that haunts the New Tories here. Leafing through this month's Vogue, I find Mr Cameron out and about at a very glamorous-looking Notting Hillbilly party for one of the Baring clan. He looks so thoroughly at home in this world.
Indeed, he attends so many events of this nature that one wonders how they will fit into the Number 10 diary: “Sorry, Prime Minister, but you can't make Johnnie Boden's bash, the Malaysian Prime Minister's in town ...”
Mr Davis and Mr Fox, by contrast, are fierce meritocrats, and both have been known to pass the odd remark about the baseball-booted Cameron set and their in-crowd lives. Just as Tony Blair suffered, as an Islington lawyer, from the suspicions of what Peter Mandelson once described as the “horny-handed sons of toil”, Mr Cameron has his own self-made men to appease.
In truth, the Tory inner circle is extremely tight. Mr Blair had his allies: Mr Cameron has his mates. The perception that Mr Gove and the other Ur-Cameronian, Ed Vaizey, escaped lightly for their expenses infringements compared to the old guard is justified. “It's one thing to move on the stubborn old bed-blockers,” says a member of the inner team. “It's another to look as if we're purging people on a whim.”
The suggestion that Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne intend to rearrange Whitehall so as to spend more time in each other's offices fails to take account of the pace of life in government. Even Mr Brown, who had hankered for the job for so long, privately admits to have been a bit bamboozled by the lack of “me time”. A new chancellor also needs to establish some independence of judgment.
Talk to Tory backbenchers, and the concern that Camp Cameron has become Clique Cameron is frequently raised. “Every time I open a door around here there's an Old Etonian behind it!” joked one rare state school-educated member of the top team.
One reason Mr Cameron clings to his communications chief, Andy Coulson, despite Mr C's Fleet Street skeletons, is that he brings a sharp Essex boy's sensibilities to the job and dilutes all the plummier sorts.
The rise of Ms Wollaston and Chloe Smith, the youthful vanquisher of Labour in the Norwich North by-election, provides the symbols of a changing party the leadership has longed for.
It does leaves the front bench looking thin, though — a talented top layer and a lot of mediocrity beyond it. I'm told that this is the single aspect of preparation for Government most fretted about by Mr Cameron, who wants the best mid-rank figures such as Phil Hammond and Chris Grayling to have a higher profile.
He is now close enough to power to feel, rightly, a little scared of it. Shining in contrast to a tired Gordon Brown is different from dazzling in one's own right. Mr Cameron will need all the friends he can get in office: not just the ones he used to meet for brunch in Tom's Deli.
Reader views (5)
westlondoners are great
- Neil, london, 06/08/2009 01:12
Report abuse
Please please save us from these public school nobs. Just look how the bumbling blustering idiotic Johnson is running London,and people are seriously talking up this buffoon chances of becoming prime minister. The only difference between Boris and Cameron is a sense of humour.
- James, Manchester England, 05/08/2009 21:49
Report abuse
Ann, Although this article makes a welcome change to your usual eulogies to Sarah Brown - her beauty, her brilliant clothes sense, the celebs to long to spend time with her, her close friend Michelle Obama and numerous other fanciful PR handouts - it doesn't persuade me that you're credible analyst of what will increase Cameron's already stratospheric approval ratings.
- April Blandings, Maida Vale, UK, 05/08/2009 16:59
Report abuse
Oh dear, yet more bile from the fragrant Ms McElvoy. Just cannot wait for Dave to shove it to these childish carpers.
- Ted, London, 05/08/2009 15:18
Report abuse
and just think how David Cameron would be criticised if he were perceived as ruthless enough to dump his old friends! Mr Cameron could do a great deal worse than have some of us West Londoners about him.
- Sally Roberts, Hammersmith, London, United Kingdom, 05/08/2009 10:51
Report abuse
