Cameron: Practically a Conservative. Elliott Francis Perry
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Название: Cameron: Practically a Conservative

Автор: Elliott Francis Perry

Издательство: HarperCollins

Жанр: Биографии и Мемуары

Серия:

isbn: 9780007283170

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СКАЧАТЬ id="uae1d693a-8aa3-5770-808d-5f2da6726dd3">

      Cameron

      The Rise of the New Conservative

      Francis Elliott & James Hanning

      

London, New York, Toronto, Sydney and New Delhi

       To Jane and Emma

      Table of Contents

       Cover Page

       Title Page

       Dedication

       Gayfere Street General election campaign 1992

       11 Downing Street Treasury 1992–1993

       Tuscany Romance 1992

       Queen Anne’S Gate Home Office 1993–1994

       St George Street Carlton Communications 1994–1997

       Knightsbridge Carlton Communications 1997–2001

       Witney Member of Parliament 2001–2003

       Ivan Firstborn

       Finstock Road Preparing for the election 2003–2005

       Blackpool Leadership election 2005

       Norman Shaw South Leader of the Opposition 2005–2007

       Millbank Leader of the Opposition 2007–

       Epilogue

       Notes

       Index

       Acknowledgements

       About the Author

       Praise

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

       PEASEMORE A Berkshire boyhood 1966–1973

      ‘So let a message go out from this conference.’ David Cameron paused, letting his audience know that he was building towards a dramatic conclusion. ‘A modern compassionate Conservatism is right for our times, right for our party – and right for our country. If we go for it, if we seize it, if we fight for it with every ounce of passion, vigour and energy from now until the next election, nothing and no one can stop us.’

      For a moment the Empress Ballroom in Blackpool’s Winter Gardens seemed bleached out by the photographers’ xenon flashes rippling round the hall as if synchronised with the sudden roar of approval. The applause intensified when the candidate was joined on stage by his wife Samantha, then pregnant with the couple’s third child. Her pregnancy gave the photographers a powerful image to illustrate his message that the time had arrived for a ‘new generation of Conservatives’. The cheering delegates may not have known that that line owed a good deal to John F. Kennedy. But they believed that the Tories had found their own young saviour.

      Cameron’s speech to the Conservative Party conference on 4 October 2005 launched him into public consciousness and set him on course for victory in the party’s leadership election. Its success took almost everyone by surprise. Even his most senior allies had not realised until a few days before how charismatic he could be. Indeed there had been some discussion about whether he should pull out of the race and declare his support for David Davis, who was then the firm favourite. But Cameron wanted a chance to perform on what was, at that point, the biggest stage of his career. He was confident that he could deliver a powerful speech. The newspaper headlines on 5 October confirmed that he was right. It turned out to be a speech of such momentum-creating power as to carry him over the finishing line a winner.

      Reflecting on his sudden burst from the rear of the leadership field to its front, a former colleague said: ‘Like all political overnight sensations, it was twenty years in the making.’ This is the story of the making of David Cameron – of how, as one of his friends put it, Cameron climbed ‘floor by floor’ to the top of the Conservative Party. It was an ascent achieved by hard work and intelligence, but it also benefited from luck and the efforts of others. This is the story, too, of a childhood spent in an England that barely exists any more. Cameron’s was a world first of nannies and matrons, then of beaks and boys’ maids. But his privilege is peculiar not so much for its material as for its emotional wealth. He likes to say that he is an optimist, and the man whom he credits with instilling in him that quality is his father.

      David Cameron’s great-great-grandfather Ewen left Scotland early in Queen Victoria’s reign and started his business career, in the mid-nineteenth century, in the Far East, working for the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank. Having become a director, he eventually returned to London to manage the bank, and was knighted for his services. His son, David Cameron’s great-grandfather, was Ewen Alan Cameron, СКАЧАТЬ