PROFILE: DAVID CAMERONHe is touted as Britain's next likely PM - and indeed the charismatic Tory leader has the ruthless confidence to be the 'heir to Blair', writes Frank Millar
DAVID CAMERON no longer calls himself the "heir to Blair". But Britain's likely next leader shares that precious commodity enjoyed for so long by the former New Labour prime minister. Indeed the first Etonian and proper "toff" to lead the Conservatives since Alex Douglas-Home might scarcely believe his luck. Widely written-off in the summer of 2007, Cameron has had a fantastic year, and it just got better: Labour's conference ended this week with Gordon Brown still clinging to power.
When rumours of a Labour leadership plot surfaced earlier this year, one well-informed commentator joked that Cameron and his aides would be on hand with a life support machine. And Brown's survival (thus far) might seem reason enough for celebration as the Conservatives gather for their own bash in Birmingham.
There will certainly be champagne-a-plenty in the bars and restaurants as hopeful Tories toast regular leads of up to 20 points in the opinion polls and a year of real electoral successes, crowned by that other Old Etonian Boris Johnson's triumph over Ken Livingstone in the election for London Mayor.
From the cautious Cameron, however, the unrelenting warning will be against any hint of complacency - and wisely so. Just 42 next month, David William Duncan Cameron has all the confidence and self-belief that comes with serious wealth, distant royal connections and an education at Britain's elite schools and colleges.
As it happens, his headmaster at Eton had also been Tony Blair's housemaster at Fettes public school. After Eton, it was Brasenose and a glittering Oxford first in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. Intellectually bright, Professor Vernon Bogdanor describes him as "one of the nicest and ablest" pupils he ever taught. For many in Britain still affected by the politics of class,that depiction will sit uncomfortably alongside the image of Cameron (along with Boris and others of their year) in waistcoat and tails, members of the ultra-exclusive, super-rich "brat pack", invitation-only "dining" club.
Nor is it just old lefties or people consumed by "the politics of envy" who don't care much for the young man, already in a hurry when pictured in the shadows while working as an adviser to then chancellor Norman Lamont on "Black Wednesday" 1992.
After a time also advising then home secretary Michael Howard, Cameron set his sights on becoming an MP and shrewdly decided to acquire some experience in the real world first. He spent seven years as head of corporate communications at Carlton Television, where he impressed his boss Michael Green as likely boardroom material with an assured future in the industry. "He's good, he's the real McCoy," Mr Green told the Independent.
Some journalists who crossed his path at the time were distinctly less impressed. "To describe Cameron's approach to corporate PR as unhelpful and evasive overstates by a widish margin the clarity and plain-speaking that he brought to the job of being Michael Green's mouthpiece," declared former BBC business editor Jeff Randall in the Daily Telegraph.
"In my experience, Cameron never gave a straight answer when dissemblance was a plausible alternative, which probably makes him perfectly suited for the role he now seeks: the next Tony Blair," he said, adding, for good measure, that he wouldn't trust him with his daughter's pocket money.
There was more than an echo of this during the closing session of Labour's conference, when deputy leader Harriet Harman suggested there was something not "quite right" about Mr Cameron. This will have seemed rich in the extreme to Tories watching Harman's defence of a beleaguered Brown, whose wife Sarah's personal introduction just the day before had struck many as a desperate attempt to make the prime minister seem more "human".
Unabashed, Harman declared of Cameron: "He's the kind of man your mother used to warn you about. He'll promise you the earth. But if he ever got his wicked way with you - in the ballot box - you'd never hear from him again."
Much has been made of the fact that women MPs have featured so prominently in the still-limited revolt against Brown's leadership. Chatting to the comrades around Manchester this week, it wasn't difficult to find ready confirmation from Labour Party members that the present prime minister is a turn-off for many women voters.
In any event, Cameron certainly got the thumbs-up from his mother-in-law Annabel for his successful and plainly happy marriage to Samantha, the daughter of a landowner whose step-father is a Baronet, and whose family tree suggests a distant connection to Nell Gwyn, mistress of Charles II. A mother of three children, Mrs Cameron also works as creative director of the upmarket stationery firm of Smythson of Bond Street. Complete with tattoo, the former art student is variously described as liberal, even "mildly bohemian" and credited with having helped complete the transformation of a husband who helped write Michael Howard's notoriously unsuccessful "dog-whistle" manifesto for the last general election.
LEST WE GET TOO pre-occupied with issues of presentation, however it it is also salutary to note that David and Samantha Cameron have been shaped and informed, too, by their experience as parents of a little boy who suffers from cerebral palsy and epilepsy.
Gordon Brown made his judgment this week, implicitly criticising Cameron when declaring that he would not use his children as "props" for the cameras. This is of course risky terrain for any politician. Yet many people will think Brown wrong and Cameron right in deciding to share his experiences of family life. Brown, moreover, has more than once referred to challenges and suffering in his own life (the latter in reference to the death of his baby daughter).
And just this week, he reminded us again that he nearly lost the sight in both eyes by way of underlining his personal commitment to the National Health Service that saved it in one.
Knowing something of the pressures on a Cameron household dominated by the needs of a disabled child should help people decide the veracity or otherwise of Labour charges that the NHS is not safe in this Tory leader's hands.
Cameron in any event makes no apology for his privileged upbringing and lifestyle while positioning himself as just the compassionate One Nation Tory to fix what he calls Brown's "broken Britain". "You can't walk a mile in everybody's shoes," he said in a recent profile for Time magazine.
"I don't have this deterministic view of life that you can only care about something if you directly experience it." As writer Catherine Mayer observed, "Fair point: but that won't stop his opponents from questioning his powers of empathy." And there is the point.
Cameron's apparently irritable reply came when he was asked if someone "marinated in plenty" could viscerally understand what it felt like to be poor and excluded. Might "champagne memories and social deprivation" make for an uneasy juxtaposition, especially in tough times?
EVEN IN NORMAL TIMES, the Conservative leader would want to guard against complacency, of seeming cocky, or ever appearing to take the election, or the electorate, for granted. But there is added danger in these times of crisis in the international markets amid threats of recession, inflation, collapsing house prices, negative equity and rising unemployment at home.
Dangerous to crow too much at the misfortunes of government when real people are hurting. Hard, too, to find the right balance and come up with a coherent alternative while the world waits on America. A testing time would always be a prospect for Cameron next week, even before the global downturn. If the challenge to Brown's leadership is temporarily stalled, news editors and readers will have grown tired of it.
As the polls continued to point to a Conservative victory at the next election, moreover, it was inevitable that the media would turn a sharper focus on the man who would lead the next government, and on the policies it would pursue. We know one large part of the narrative all right, the withering denunciations of Gordon Brown, the "light touch" regulator who in 10 years as chancellor taxed and spent and failed to fix the roof in anticipation of the rainy day.
Defining a credible set of policy alternatives, however, is rendered hugely more difficult by the simple fact that the Conservatives can have simply no idea what state the British economy might be in if and when they inherit. Indeed shadow chancellor George Osborne has already signalled that he will have to rethink his entire tax-and-spend strategy.
So Cameron is right to caution against complacency. Yet, Brown would also be prudent to fear him, for he has already proven himself the most successful Tory leader since Margaret Thatcher was at the height of her powers.
As Jonathan Caine reminds us in a very useful publication Cameron's Conservatives, due out the week after next, it is no time at all since then party chairman Teresa May confronted the Conservatives (who had turned in vain to William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard) with the awful truth that they were seen and judged the "nasty party" in British politics. And it was true.
Yet, with all the ruthlessness of a Tony Blair before him, Cameron has forced the Conservatives on to the tolerant, inclusivist centre-ground of British politics, decontaminated "the brand" and made his party once-more electable. Whatever Labour decides about Brown, the election looks like Cameron's to lose.
CV DAVID CAMERON
Who is he?The leader of the British Conservative Party
Why is he in the news?It's conference time - and he's tipped to win the next election
Most appealing characteristic:He's modern, moderate and does "human"
Least appealing characteristic:Probably enjoys mauling Gordon Brown a tad too much
Most likely to say:"Bring it (the election) on"
Least likely to say:"If it isn't hurting it isn't working"