Why a selfie of his and Sam’s feet is far from the only cringe making thing about Dave’s life after No10
From making a ‘Terminator’ video with Arnie to an X-rated party with naked dancers ...
SITTING in a crowded cafe at London’s City Airport, the well- spoken traveller sipping his coffee attracted occasional curious glances from fellow passengers.
Locked in conversation with a male companion, he wore an open-necked shirt and dark suit. It was David Cameron about to embark on another holiday.
Back in his Downing Street pomp, Cameron would arrive only minutes before take-off and be whisked straight through the VIP lounge into a front seat.
But, 12 months on from the day his premiership ended in tears with the historic vote to leave the EU, the former PM had to join the British Airways queue to board the flight to Malaga.
Cameron, his wife Samantha and their three children, Nancy, Elwen and Florence, are staying in a stunning villa in Andalusia. It is owned by Janetta Parlade, a cousin of Samantha, whose late husband Jaime was a leading Spanish interior designer.
The villa, in the style of an English country house, has gardens which boast terraces, wisteria- covered pergolas, cypresses, olive and citrus groves, as well as a discreetly sited swimming pool.
Also at the villa are Samantha’s brother Rob Sheffield, the flamboyant heir to his father’s baronetcy, and her sister Emily Sheffield, deputy editor of British Vogue.
On Thursday, Cameron and Samantha celebrated their 21st wedding anniversary, marking the occasion with a bizarre Instagram photo of their naked feet as they lay on the bed in the picturesque villa. It’s not the first instance of Cameron’s increasingly quirky behaviour. Last month, the 50-year- old and his wife joined friends at a private club where a naked female burlesque dancer wearing just a necklace performed an X-rated cabaret act.
The cabaret was at Soho Farmhouse in Great Tew, Oxfordshire, frequented by Prince Harry, David Beckham and many of Cameron’s beloved Chipping Norton set. A male stripper performed a balancing act upside down.
At another party, Cameron was pictured with Rob Sheffield’s saucily dressed ex-girlfriend Sophia Hesketh, daughter of Tory grandee Lord Hesketh, who posted the snap on Instagram with the words ‘Total legend’.
Cameron was also photographed recently in the Oxford Street branch of JD Sports in London buying a multi-pack of white sports socks.
He took them to the cash desk, where he realised he had bought the wrong size and went back to swap them.
He then allegedly pushed past ten patiently queueing shoppers to reach the pay desk again, muttering loudly that he was going to be late for an appointment with Barack Obama, the former U.S. President.
A shopper who filmed Cameron approached his two bodyguards, saying: ‘ You can’t push me. JD Sports is a public place.’ Cameron’s bodyguard replied: ‘ Nobody is pushing you,’ before Cameron left, saying: ‘I think we have to skip this.’
After the incident, he was mercilessly mocked on Twitter. ‘ Lo how the mighty hath fallen,’ said one person, while another tweeted: ‘ You are nobody now. To the back of the queue!’
Yet another added: ‘Typical Conservatives as David Cameron jumps the queue.’
For Cameron, this Andalusian villa is a refuge from the General Election, which is a constant reminder of his ignominious departure from Downing Street.
To help distract him, he has packed his tennis rackets. Cameron was once a leading figure in the Westminster tennis team and has taken up the sport with renewed passion since leaving office — hence the need to purchase sports socks at JD Sports.
Although the holiday was planned before Theresa May’s surprise election announcement, friends say Cameron is struggling to cope as polling day nears. Not since he was an unsuccessful candidate in Stafford in 1997 has Cameron been so removed from a Tory campaign.
He was finally elected as an MP in 2001, and as Tory leader in the 2010 and 2015 elections he was, of course, in the thick of the action. During May, Cameron was spotted on the campaign trail only once — in Crewe and Nantwich. He was backing his friend Edward Timpson, the Children’s Minister, who is defending a 3,620 majority.
The constituency was the scene of Cameron’s best
‘It’s hard for him not to be in the election’
by‑election victory while Tory leader in 2008.
Cameron, who lives in a small village on the edge of his old Witney constituency, has not been seen in his old campaign haunts or in any surrounding target seats.
Evelyn Joy, the Tory agent in Witney, said: ‘We haven’t seen him and I think I would know if he was going to campaign around here before polling day.’
While Cameron has had limited contact with Theresa May since last summer, it’s been made crystal clear by Downing Street officials that his presence on the hustings will not be welcome.
A friend said: ‘He’s relaxing with Sam and the children. He’s playing tennis, walking and, as he would say, chillaxing.
‘This election is hard for him. He’s emotional about not being involved. The family are trying to keep him away from the TV because it makes him melancholy.
‘It would have been nice if No 10 asked him to do some target seats, but so far there hasn’t been a call. I don’t think one is coming. There is no relationship whatsoever with him and Theresa and, more importantly, her team of advisers.
‘But then, they know what he thought about them when he was in charge. He’s also cut himself off from all his friends in Parliament.’
Two former colleagues he stays in contact with are ex‑Chancellor George Osborne, and Lord Feldman, his friend from Oxford, who was the Tory chairman.
Since he left No 10, Cameron has been trying to carve out a new and meaningful role in his life. He is on the books of an agency called the Washington Speakers Bureau and in demand on the international lecture circuit.
In the U.S., he made a Snapchat video with Hollywood star and ex‑governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger.
It was posted on the actor’s account, with Cameron — in a parody of Arnie’s immortal line in the Terminator films — saying: ‘I’m here with the governor, he did a great job and I’ll be back.’
In March, at the Davos World Economic Forum, Cameron spoke at a lunch held by Victor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian billionaire.
At the end of March he delivered a lecture — ‘Ukraine’s place in a changing world’ — at the institute of international relations of Kyiv [Kiev] National University.
He’s paid around £120,000 for each speech and is doing at least two a month. He has already earned more than £1 million since he left office.
When he was PM he often talked to his aides about life after Downing Street and speculated about whether the top job at Nato would come his way.
The Norwegian Jens Stoltenberg is due to step down from the post next year, but it seems unlikely that European Nato members will accept as his replacement the man who triggered the potential break‑up of the EU.
Cameron’s most pressing task is to write his memoirs.
Although he’s finding it tough going, his friend Jacob Rothschild has given him an office in London’s St James’s. However, Cameron prefers to go to his home in Oxford‑shire to write, or to the North Yorkshire estate of his wife’s father, Sir Reggie Sheffield.
In April, Cameron spent £25,000 on a chic shepherd’s hut complete with a wood‑burning stove, sofa‑bed and wool insulation. His three children wanted it as a playroom, but Cameron is using it as his writing room.
So far, he has completed the section about his privileged upbringing at Eton and Oxford and is now onto his rise through the ranks, becoming an MP and Tory leader four years later.
Cameron has had invitations to speak at book fairs this summer and autumn, but has rejected them because the book is nowhere near complete — not least because he’s taking so much time off.
There have been holidays in Corsica and Cornwall, and he’s enjoying spending more time with his children — last December, he was pictured at London’s Winter Wonderland fair with daughter Florence, something that would have been far more difficult in his Downing Street days.
Cameron has taken up golf — with limited success. He is also shooting and riding, two country pursuits that fell victim to political discretion during a decade as a Tory leader.
The game birds of North Yorkshire and Oxfordshire have paid a price for his departure from frontline politics.
The family are back living in their Notting Hill home which they rented out when they were in Downing Street. And Cameron is a regular again at White’s, the oldest and perhaps most exclusive of all London’s gentlemen’s clubs.
Cameron famously abandoned the club because of the men‑only rule when he was Tory leader.
One Tory peer, and a stalwart of the club, tells me: ‘He’s here a lot now. Wouldn’t be seen dead here, though, when he was Tory leader in case it sent out the wrong message. Bloody hypocrite!’
The former prime minister is also working, with little ballyhoo, on his role as president of Alzheimer’s Research UK — an unpaid ambassadorial position he took up in January — to champion the need for research.
But the vexed question ahead is, where will he be on election night? He can use a postal vote to avoid being photographed at his local polling station on election day, so he could stay on in Spain.
Whatever the case, he will be trying to avoid the limelight . . .
‘How the mighty hath fallen,’ says a tweet
‘He’s cut himself off from friends in Parliament’