Cameron: Practically a Conservative. Elliott Francis Perry

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СКАЧАТЬ was both a hostage to class warriors and a stroke of some brilliance–whether spontaneous or planned – when Cameron claimed in October 2005 that he had had ‘a normal university experience’. Regularly child-minding a Rastafarian’s infant son while the father cooks goat curry is most decidedly not a standard ‘university experience’. Punting with Jade Jagger is not normal. And dressing up in tailcoats and drinking dangerous quantities of vintage claret is normal only for a very small number of people. Cameron made his claim in deflecting a question about whether he had taken drugs at university. ‘If you go to university and don’t go to parties there is something wrong,’ he continued at a conference fringe event the day after his leadership election-winning speech. Had he answered the question directly and honestly the answer would almost certainly have been yes. But his consumption of cannabis – at most infrequent and moderate – during his three years at Oxford University is one of the less interesting features of his ‘normal’ residence at that great seat of learning.

      David Cameron arrived at Brasenose College in Michaelmas term 1985 to read Politics, Philosophy and Economics. By the mid-1980s Oxford colleges were coming under pressure to admit more candidates educated at state schools, but the intake of Brasenose in 1985 suggests that that college’s tutors, at least, were not minded to submit. In lining up for his matriculation photograph Cameron found himself in familiar company. Five other Old Etonians had won places that year out of around a hundred freshers. Cameron was only the second Etonian in twenty-seven years to read PPE at the college. It was an unusually large intake from the school, especially for Brasenose, not one of Oxford’s grander colleges. While Christ Church and Balliol tend to attract the cream of the public school clientele, Brasenose is more modest, smaller and more intimate than most. It is located at the heart of the university on Radcliffe Square but is proud of its insularity; new members are not generally anxious about making a big impact on the wider Oxford stage.

      Toby Young, a satirist, who overlapped with Cameron for a year at Brasenose, has drawn a caricature of its social ecology at the time. Its students, he has written, divided between ‘stains’ and ‘socialites’. The former anorak-wearing products of suburban state-education are contrasted with the more physically attractive scions of the elite. ‘Stains’ tried to get on in life, both academically and socially, and were despised as they did so by their rugby-playing, hard-drinking, privately educated peers. Young records how Cameron’s ‘unusually large number of Etonians’ threatened to disturb this scene when they arrived on the battleground in 1985. ‘Loud, hearty and unpretentious’, they joined forces with the ‘stain’-baiters eventually. ‘Initially the “sound” college men were a little suspicious of these young bloods, imagining that their apparent sympathy was merely a sophisticated form of taking the piss. However after the Old Etonians had proved themselves to be solid drinkers and didn’t complain when the hearties parked tigers [that is, vomited] all over their Persian rugs they were accepted into the fold.’

      It would be unfair and wrong to suggest that Cameron did not mix socially at Brasenose, or that he was an unthinking member of the ‘socialite’ set. He picked his way carefully through the various camps, siding with the humorous against the earnest, but all the while keeping his eye on the goal he had set himself. One friend at the time remarked that Cameron had been motivated to get into Oxford partly to trump his elder brother. In truth, the pair had always got on well and – says someone who knows them both extremely well – were genuinely pleased at one another’s success. Whatever the spur, there was no doubt of Cameron’s next ambition: to get a first-class degree.

      Some Etonians feel that after five years in charmed surroundings, they are ready for a dose of something a bit different. David Cameron was not one of these. At Eton, a boy’s timetable is finely calibrated to pack as much as possible into a day. On leaving, some boys breathe a sigh of relief at escaping the regimentation. But Cameron, showing a trait also evident in his father, managed his time as a student with the sort of ruthless efficiency that most people never manage in their careers. His relaxed manner belied a remarkable degree of self-discipline. By the end of his first year he had managed so to arrange his affairs that he reckoned he could complete his work in half the week and spend the rest of his time on other pursuits.

      It helped, of course, that his new educational establishment was so like his old. Having developed a verbal fluency in tutorials at Eton, Cameron was always an impressive performer in similar arenas at Oxford. Brasenose’s PPE students were, in the words of one tutor, ‘quite a chatty lot’ and would readily confer with one another to thrash out problems with which they had been confronted. ‘David was an outstanding student,’ says one of his economics tutors, Peter Sinclair, who often taught in classes of a dozen or more. ‘He was very, very good at economics and his academic record was really unblemished. He was very endearing, and would be very supportive of the others.’ Sinclair points to a technique – perhaps Cameron would call it good manners – which has become something of a hallmark of his style in later life. ‘When he disagreed with something he’d really worked hard on and thought about a lot, he’d say, “Well, I don’t know much about this, but don’t you have a feeling that so-and-so,” when in fact he’d been researching quite carefully and knew so-and-so was probably right. He wouldn’t parade his knowledge arrogantly. His contributions in classes would be thought out and charmingly delivered, often to make a joke or make light of it.’

      While in the abstract this might sound condescending – the public school boy playing the didact with his social inferiors – those who were there deny this. For one thing, there was little question that he was one of the cleverest. Vernon Bogdanor says he was among the brightest 5 per cent of students he has ever taught, and believes that Cameron’s influence was such that his presence in tutorials improved the grades of some of his contemporaries. ‘He was liked by his tutors since he was both courteous and stimulating to teach. He enjoyed an argument. It was clear from the moment he arrived that he was likely to secure a very good degree. I would have been surprised if he had not achieved a First. He is one of the ablest and nicest students whom I have taught,’ recalls Bogdanor today.

      Outside tutorials he was popular with most – if not all – of his fellow students. ‘He was clearly an Etonian,’ says a Brasenose contemporary Steve Rathbone (no relation of Tim), who came from North Yorkshire and was state-school educated, ‘but he wasn’t swaggering around in a braying Sloaney way. Equally, he wasn’t trying to be something he wasn’t. He never tried to adopt an estuary accent, as many students do from major public schools, or wear right-on trendy clothes. He was a good mate of people from very different backgrounds.’ It must have helped, too, that he rarely forgot the little courtesies. Unusually, he would say ‘thank you’ to his tutor at the end of every tutorial.

      He studied hard. ‘I do remember being impressed and slightly alarmed by how focused he was,’ says James Fergusson, an Eton and Brasenose contemporary who read English. ‘I was keen on my subject, but nothing like as keen as he was. He knew exactly what he wanted, which was to be the top-dog student and to get a First. That was it without a doubt. He loved it, he was passionate about it. At Brasenose a lot of life went on in the back quad, and you would see the PPE lot were having a good time. Dave would hold court in a classic Oxford way, quoting Locke and Hume. He loved it.’

      His tutors, in recognition of his application and intelligence, upgraded his exhibition to a full scholarship. Cameron chose to continue with all three elements of his PPE course after the first year, rather than drop one and sit additional specialist papers in the remaining two as he was entitled to do. It is a testament to his self-confidence that he chose what Bogdanor insists was the harder path. ‘The tripartite option was the more difficult option, since it was harder to achieve an alpha standard in three such disparate subjects as Philosophy, Politics and Economics than in just two. During the time David was an undergraduate, fewer of those taking the tripartite option secured First than those taking the bipartite option.’

      While university can be a time for experimentation and exploration, much of Cameron’s Oxford experience seems to have served СКАЧАТЬ