As election day approaches, David Cameron talks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth about Tory principles, where his campaign went wrong, and what might happen if he doesn’t win
To gauge how much trouble David Cameron is in, one need only check his smile. In the days when he enjoyed a seemingly impregnable lead over Labour, he appeared fretful and inactive. But when he meets The Spectator on a train to Southampton, he is wearing a grin. This can only mean one thing: he is, once again, fighting for his political life. The polls are no longer predicting a Tory victory but a hung parliament — and senior Conservatives wonder if their leader will have to do a deal with the Lib Dems. Defeat seems to have been snatched from the jaws of victory.
The television debates, of course, changed everything. A couple of years back, Mr Cameron was asked to name his favourite political joke. ‘Nick Clegg,’ he replied. Now that a Lib Dem surge looks likely to deprive the Tories of a majority, is he is still laughing? ‘I can’t remember saying that,’ he says. ‘Look, clearly it’s a challenge but this is one we can meet.’ There’s still time, he says, to win outright. ‘One of the key tests of an election campaign is: can you adapt to changing circumstances? And we have. Not least in terms of changing our battleground.’
We are bound for Southampton because the collapse in the Labour vote has opened up new marginal constituencies. But his problem — nationwide — is simple. The Tory campaign message has not succeeded. Voters who turned away from Gordon Brown are not turning to Mr Cameron. As he starts to talk about this, a ticket collector asks him to pose with her for a picture. Cameron, who has remembered her name from earlier, gets up instantly. She beams as they are photographed together. But does he have her vote? ‘I’ll be honest with you. I don’t know what to do,’ she says. Multiply this attitude by 20 million, and you see Mr Cameron’s problem.
The ideas Mr Cameron has come out with, such as the Big Society, may well be radical. They are firmly in the Tory tradition. But might this idea have worked better if it had been wheeled out much earlier, rather than just a month before the election? ‘To be fair, I have been wheeling it out for five years,’ he says, looking frustrated. But it is only when he introduced the phrase ‘Big Society’ three weeks ago, he says, that the media started to pay attention to the principle. ‘I did feel, with Her Majesty’s press corps, the light bulb was switching on. It was frustrating it hadn’t switched on earlier — but that’s life sometimes.’
Yet he did not mention ‘Big Society’ once during the television debates. Nor did he mention the best example of it: the plan for a new breed of independent schools in the state sector, aimed at giving every parent a choice within four years. If these plans are so important, why didn’t he allude to them, even when he was asked about education? ‘Well you have a choice in debates. You are very conscious that a clock is ticking in front of you and you have got a minute. After 50 seconds, it starts flashing yellow.’
The opinion polls are flashing yellow at the moment. The Lib Dem surge may be abating — but it remains strong enough to deny the Tories victory. Rumours of a Tory-Lib Dem deal on a referendum for proportional representation are in the air. By repeatedly refusing to rule this out, Mr Cameron has not allayed the fears of many in his party: he is choosing his words carefully.
‘I don’t support a referendum, the Conservatives don’t plan one, we don’t want one.’ But would it be illegitimate to have voting reform without a referendum? ‘Oh, completely. I have a genuine view, and this was something I felt very strongly at the time of the Maastricht debates, about this whole concept of changing the rules, changing powers — you can’t do these things without asking the people.’
The contours of a potential Lib-Con pact, then, begin to emerge. What about other Tory policies: is their position on marriage, for example, non-negotiable? ‘I am not going to go through the manifesto in that way. The manifesto is what we believe in, that’s what we want to achieve, that is what matters.’ One can see why Mr Cameron does not want to answer this question. But it is relevant. If a hung parliament is in the air, voters will want to know what Mr Cameron’s price is. He refuses to name it. ‘Trying to fillet your own manifesto is not a particularly good use of time in the actual campaign.’
So some manifesto ideas may be dropped. Other ideas may be adopted. One which he expresses interest in is Ken Livingstone’s plan — adopted by Boris Johnson — for a ‘living wage’ of £7.60 an hour. ‘I think it is attractive, I think Boris was right to do it and I think I’d like to see it happen,’ he says. ‘We would obviously have to make sure that the maths add up. But there are great opportunities actually to reduce civil service bonuses in order to help pay for it. It is something that we would like to do.’
That the Conservatives should be in this situation now — asking what principles might be bartered for power-sharing with the Lib Dems — is remarkable when one considers the unpopularity of Mr Brown and the extent of his failure. Some Tories grumble that the decision to agree to the leaders’ debates is perhaps the worst decision of Mr Cameron’s leadership, given that it unleashed a Lib Dem surge which went on to hurt the Tories more than Labour. In retrospect, does he think his decision to hold the debates was a mistake?
‘If you have campaigned for having TV debates for four years, you can’t very well refuse to go ahead with them. I believe in the debates, I think they are good for our democracy. Other countries have them — if you want to be a modern democracy you need to — and so we stuck by our guns and decided to have them.’ Even if the net effect was to harm the party he leads? ‘Well, the net effect has certainly been to open up the contest and make it more challenging,’ he says. ‘Life is full of challenges.’
And what about George Osborne? Was it a mistake to give him two jobs: shadow chancellor and election campaign co-ordinator? Mr Cameron seems astonished by the question. ‘Well, I would just say look at the evidence. Have we won the big battle on the economy? Yes. Are we running the most professional, energetic campaign? Yes. So he is a very capable man.’ Cameron was part of John Major’s 1992 campaign, which he says was ‘not very professional’. He points to Ed Llewellyn, his chief of staff, a fellow veteran of that campaign. ‘Ed used to come back every day covered in eggs!’ Ed smiles.
Only one egg has been hurled at Cameron during the 2010 campaign (at the time of writing). But worse might come after the election, and from his famously regicidal party. He says he has detected no discontent — but a few days ago he proposed a new law (even surprising some members of his own shadow Cabinet) that an election would have to be called within six months of a change of Prime Minister. Might that be a way of dissuading his party from their old leader-knifing ways? He laughs and shakes his head. ‘You won’t believe me,’ he said. ‘But actually I hadn’t thought about that. Really, it had never crossed my mind.’
Cameron is a polished performer. There is only one point during the interview when his frustration shows, and that is when he is pushed on whether the 50p tax will raise revenue, a long-running disagreement between him and this magazine. He says he can’t afford to get rid of it — but has he found any independent evidence to suggest that this tax will raise money? ‘I assume it will raise some money. But if it doesn’t, then clearly the easier it will be to get rid of it.’
Mr Cameron is the opposite of a political obsessive. Those who spend time with him remark on two qualities. First, his energy. And then his ability to switch off. To cross the threshold of his home and switch into human mode: ignore the newspapers and turn his attention to things like cooking biscuits with his children, or taking them on expeditions to steal cow manure for his Oxfordshire garden.
So he should have no problem with a few non-political questions. Favourite hymn? ‘It used to be “Jerusalem”, but now it’s “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind”.’ Does he read much poetry, beyond his first world war staples? ‘Norman Lamont was a great fan of Shelley, he used to read me all his favourite poems.’ This conjures up a wonderful image of the former Chancellor and his special adviser using sonnets to escape their worries around Black Wednesday. Did Lord Lamont read out any poems in particular? ‘No, no, I won’t even go there,’ he says, ‘I think we’ll leave that to one side.’
Ideology seldom intrudes into Cameron’s political or personal habits. When asked to name his favourite economist (he studied PPE at university) he ums and ahs before commenting that ‘a favourite economist is a bit of a weird thing to admit to having’. Not even Milton Friedman? ‘I am not someone who reads Free to Choose and thinks: right, well that’s my credo.’
Here he is proudly different to Baroness Thatcher, whose picture stands on his desk. She once famously produced Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty from her handbag and sternly declared to colleagues: ‘this is what we believe.’ We repeat the story to him, and he smiles. ‘Well, I have a different way. I see Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four as one of the great books about political philosophy and theory — in a more sort of readable way.’
He leaves the station at Southampton, almost emptying the first-class carriage, which had been full of his staff and accompanying journalists. As the train pulls away, the remaining passengers start to compare notes. Someone goes to see how much rubbish he has left, and declares it far from ideal. ‘Less mess than Gordon Brown!’ jokes another. Then they start to discuss whether they will vote for him — or will they vote at all? Like the ticket collector, they remain undecided.