The most unexpected characteristic so far of the Cameron leadership of the Conservative party is caution. Westminster had been braced for some kind of spectacular announcement, or perhaps a series of announcements, signalling dramatic change. This has not been forthcoming. The day Cameron got elected a friend of mine rang up.
‘It’s all up,’ he said. ‘It’s finished.’
‘Surely Cameron isn’t as bad as all that,’ I replied.
‘I don’t mean Dave,’ he said. ‘I mean me. I’ll never get a seat now.’
My friend is a white, middle-class male in his late thirties. He has struggled up the system, fighting a hopeless seat, never wasting the opportunity to ingratiate himself with constituency chairmen, heads of candidate selection, party functionaries, however obscure, local newspaper editors or anybody who might conceivably be of any use to him whatsoever in his indefatigable and quite shameless search for a secure constituency. There was no consoling the poor fellow.
Three days later he rang again. Proposals for a new 140-strong ‘A list’ had been announced. They were being hailed in the press and by interested organisations such as the Fawcett Society as the dawn of a new era.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘They don’t mean it.’
‘Don’t mean what?’
He explained that he had studied the proposals put forward for candidate selection by the Conservative party with great care. ‘It’s just the same as before,’ he said. He noted that Cameron had taken none of the deadly steps, such as imposing all-women shortlists, which would have inflicted really serious damage on his chances.
‘I’ll be in Parliament after the next election,’ he said.
It is the same with policy. There was a general expectation that the new leader would make some emblematic break with the past.
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