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This book provides a new and distinctive interpretation on the political strategy of David Cameron as leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister. Rather than offering a chronological overview of his leadership, or a policy-based approach, the book assesses Cameronism via two themes – modernisation and manipulation. In terms of the modernisation the book will examine the following. First, how Cameron attempted to detoxify the negative image of the Conservatives. Second, how Cameron sought to delegitimise Labour as a party of government by deflecting the blame on austerity onto the legacy of Labour in office. Third, how Cameron used the Big Society narrative as a means of reducing the perceived responsibilities of the state. In terms of manipulation the book will evaluate Cameronism in relation to coalition government, and the exploitation of the Liberal Democrats will be examined, notably in relation to austerity, tuition fees and electoral reform. Cameronism will also be examined in relation the challenges to the existing political order by considering the demands for Scottish independence, and the rise of UKIP and the case for a referendum on continued European Union membership. Through this dual emphasis on modernisation and manipulation the book will provide an exploration of the key events and issues that defined the premiership of David Cameron, and a clear overview of his successes and failures as leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister. The book will be essential reading to those interested in British party politics and prime ministerial leadership.
Enoch Powell once famously said that ‘all political lives end in failure, because that is the nature of politics’ (Powell, 1977 : 151). Those words seem most apt when we consider the political career of David Cameron. For all his apparent success as a politician, he will be forever remembered as the Prime Minister who called a referendum on continued European Union (EU
The aim of the second part of the book has been to explore Cameronism as political manipulation. Chapters 5 and 6 have done so by examining the dynamics between the coalition partners between 2010 and 2015. Chapter 5 considered how Cameron and the Conservatives outmanoeuvred Clegg, and his Liberal Democrat colleagues, in terms of the negotiations regarding policy and personnel. Chapter 6
This chapter is concerned with how Cameronism evolved, from opposition and into coalition government, in terms of internal party change. The starting point for this analysis is to recognise that in marketing terms the Conservative Party were toxic when Cameron inherited the party leadership, and that their image problems constituted the central obstacle to electoral recovery. Cameron
opposition and into government would be that Britain was ‘broken’ – both economically and socially. This was then used to argue for a change of governing philosophy, away from the ‘Big Government’ mentality of the centre left, and towards the ‘Big Society’ or the smaller state solutions offered by Cameron and the modernisers (Smith, 2010 ; Smith and Jones, 2015 ). The Conservatives faced a conundrum, with regard to Labour
The idea of outmanoeuvring the Liberal Democrats in terms of policy and personnel is not the only way in which Cameron exploited his junior coalition partners. The other way was in legislative terms. The previous chapter considered the options that were available to Cameron in the aftermath of the General Election of 2010. It was emphasised how governing alone as a minority government
The previous two chapters have considered the evidence of continuity and change within the Conservative Party under Cameron. Chapter 2 focused in on the modernisation debates to examine the presentation of change and the level of acceptance within the PCP. Chapter 3 considered the extent to which the critique of Labour changed under Cameron. The findings within
The first part of the book concentrated on examining the concept of modernisation in relation to how the Conservative Party under Cameron changed. It did so in terms of detoxifying their own image; how they delegitimised Labour as an alternative; and how they sought to depoliticise their austerity agenda under the rhetorical slogan of the Big Society. The second part of the
1 David Cameron’s leadership and party renewal Gillian Peele Writing on the tenth anniversary of David Cameron’s victory in the Conservative leadership election, Paul Goodman, the editor of the influential online site ConservativeHome, noted that on some measures Cameron’s decade in the leadership made him the second most successful Conservative leader in the last hundred years (ConservativeHome, 6 December 2015). Yet, as Goodman’s article also un derlined, there is a sense in which Cameron’s leadership remains puzzling and problematic: for many observers his
3 Policies under Cameron: modernisation abandoned Peter Dorey Integral to the process of ideological revision and ostensible repositioning examined by Richard Hayton in the previous chapter, the early years of David Cameron’s leadership entailed a broad-ranging review of Conservative Party policy. Professing the need to ‘move on’ from Thatcherism and discarding the Conservatives’ apparent ‘nasty party’ image, Cameron immediately, upon being elected leader, initiated a systematic review of the Party’s policies, with the apparent intention of either modifying them