He’s angry, vengeful — and broken by the loss of power
So is it next stop New York for Dave and Samantha?
‘It is going to strike many as an act of selfishness’ ‘George Osborne has frankly had more offers’
THE plan was clear enough in David Cameron’s mind. He would stand down as an MP – and Prime Minister – in 2018. Not only would he leave Downing Street with his reputation intact, he would buck the political trend by quitting (a little earlier than he had promised) but still as a winner, not a loser.
Or so he believed when he was chatting to friends at a fireside supper at Chequers earlier this year – long before the Brexit vote that detonated his career – where guests included a British writer recently returned from a stint in New York.
Cameron’s wife Samantha was grilling the writer’s companion about life in Manhattan and where the best districts were to live. ‘The message from that evening was that after years of putting himself first, when the time arrived for him to leave power the Prime Minister was going to let Sam call the shots,’ says a friend.
The idea seemed to be that when that time finally came in 2018, Cameron would exit Downing Street in a blaze of glory, leaving the path clear for his Tory successor to fight the 2020 election.
Only then would he concentrate on his memoirs while his wife, free from the scrutiny that had accompanied her throughout his years in office, could fulfil her dream of setting up her own fashion label.
And yes, that might mean basing themselves for a stint in the US. How different and how unedifying the reality!
Only a few months after that cosy supper, and less than nine weeks after leaving No 10, Cameron yesterday completed his flight from public office by abruptly quitting politics altogether.
Political allies were quick to defend him, insisting that he was left with little choice. By remaining, he risked being accused either of becoming a ‘backseat driver’, or doing too little. Thus, they argued, he was doing the decent thing.
But after extensive inquiries among Cameron’s closest cronies and friends, another story has emerged: they suggest that the former prime minister has been crushed by the loss of power, and has simply not come to terms with his dramatic reversal of fortune.
One close friend who has known Cameron for years says: ‘I had the strong impression before the EU vote, which he was convinced he would win, that he would go much sooner than people thought, mainly for Sam’s sake.
‘Hubristically he wanted to be able to say he had walked away after winning three referendums (Brexit, Scottish independence and the AV vote) and two general elections, while setting things up for George Osborne as his preferred successor. So he wanted to go unexpectedly like Harold Wilson did, with people wanting more, while at the same time tearing up the rule book that says all political careers end in failure.’
This was the patrician Cameron, educated at Eton and Oxford, to whom everything had come so easily. Yet Brexit changed everything utterly. ‘Quitting now as MP is like the little boy who says, “If I can’t be captain I am taking the ball home”, says the friend. ‘It is going to strike many as an act of selfishness.’
Pictures of a haunted-looking Cameron on holiday in Cornwall last month suggested a man shattered by the turn of events. They showed him sitting alongside two women whose faces displayed indifference at the barefoot man distractedly eating chips between them. Some even wondered if he was broken.
Other pictures of him paddling in the sea over the summer showed he had begun to put on weight.
Shock at the loss of the EU referendum in June, followed by being swiftly turfed out of Downing Street along with his family when the Tories decided on a coronation not an election for a successor, is said by friends to have hit him hard.
‘The transition from all-powerful PM to lowly MP has not gone well,’ says one. ‘He enjoyed the trappings of power, the chauffeur-driven cars, the staff and the country retreat at Chequers. It’s all very corrupting.’
In fact it has already caused a grave social complication. For Cameron had expected to spend the summer drawing up the guest list for his 50th birthday party next month. This is not as straightforward as it would once have been. For he has purged from the list those former close friends who backed Leave, and whom he blames for destroying his premiership.
‘Anyone who backed Michael Gove for leader in July has been removed,’ I am told. ‘That includes people who were once key members of the Notting Hill set who helped get Dave the leadership himself in 2005. Indeed, he has been taking particular pleasure in ridiculing those people who backed Michael for running what he calls “the worst leadership campaign ever!”’
The birthday party would have been at Chequers, where Cameron would have been host. Instead he is having to rely on the generosity of friends to step in.
We understand that multi-millionaire Midlands property developer Tony Gallagher, who lives in Cameron’s Witney constituency, has stepped in and offered to hold the bash.
(Brexit has poisoned more than just Cameron’s personal relationships – it has affected his wider social set, too. One London hostess had to scrap plans to invite a woman friend to a tea party because she was married to a prominent Leave supporter, and Samantha Cameron was due to attend.)
Even when Cameron made a rare appearance in the House of Commons last week, carrying his own bag, he looked out of sorts.
It hasn’t helped that his family have been unable to settle domestically since leaving Downing Street.
For their first five days, he and Sam and their three children lodged in PR guru Sir Alan Parker’s £17million Holland Park mansion. Since July 18, they have had the use of a £4million Chelsea townhouse owned by Old Etonian investment tycoon Dominic Johnson, a business partner of Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg.
They are staying there rent-free until the end of October, by which time they will either move back into their pre-Downing Street home in north Kensington, which has been rented out at £72,000 a year, or find a new house of their own to buy.
Happily, Cameron also has his £1.3million Oxfordshire constituency home, which he is now planning to do up.
Of course all these property plans will need money. Certainly there is no reason why a former prime minister shouldn’t profit from his experience and knowledge.
However, I understand that Cameron has been disappointed that offers to join the boards of banks and other blue chip firms have so far not come flooding in.
‘George Osborne has frankly had more offers,’ says an insider. But the former chancellor wants to remain in front-line politics. David Cameron does not.
There is still time. Tony Blair, that most avaricious of former premiers, acquired the first of his lucrative deals some six months after exiting No 10, when he joined bankers JP Morgan on £500,000 to provide strategic advice.
Prime ministerial memoirs have become a lucrative way of filling the post-Downing Street years, of course, and Cameron is understood to have secured a deal with publishers HarperCollins. If he receives
half of Blair’s reputed £4.6million advance, he will have done well. His friend, the Times columnist Lord (Danny) Finkelstein, has been offering help in writing the book.
‘I get the impression he wants to write a version of events of his 11 years as leader of the Conservatives, as well as of his time as PM that allows him to sleep well at night,’ says one who knows Cameron well.
‘He will spend a year doing it but, yes, there will be some settling of scores.’
One figure in his cross-hairs is his former policy chief Steve Hilton. A one-time close friend, who was at the heart of the Cameron project, Hilton came out for Brexit, and that has made him an enemy.
‘He’s baffled by Steve’s behaviour and he is tempted to punish him by writing Hilton out of the book altogether,’ says a Tory MP.
He is, however, loyal to other old friends, among them the children’s author Giles Andreae, with whom he holidayed in Cornwall recently, and comedian Harry Enfield and his designer wife Lucy.
She received priceless free publicity when Samantha dressed her daughters in Lucy’s clothes for the choreographed departure from Downing Street in July.
As well as writing his book, Cameron has also been approached by the specialist Washington Speakers Bureau to join their roster of international statesmen.
But will all this be enough for a proud – some even say arrogant – man whose long-term political legacy will be failing to secure a Remain vote, and leaving a toxic honours list that rewarded cronies and friends?
‘He is still completely stunned that the country voted the way it did on June 23, but he is outraged by the way – as he sees it – Theresa May is undoing his achievements,’ says a Tory friend. ‘He was furious at her sacking of George Osborne, and he knew she didn’t like Eton boys.
‘But he thinks the grammar schools decision is a complete disaster. He saw grammars as Eton writ small, and that stopping them helped ordinary people. Now, she is doing the opposite.’
There is one other thing on David Cameron’s to-do list.
Nothing enraged him more as prime minister than what he saw as personal attacks on the integrity of his late father Ian, after he was named in the leaked Panama Papers over an offshore fund.
‘His father was a very straight, upright Home Counties type and he was really very upset by suggestions that damaged his reputation,’ says a friend. ‘He sees restoring it as unfinished family business. If there was to be a clean-up of the City over all the claims of money laundering, he would like a role in that.’
For now, however, he has a birthday party to plan, and in the longer term perhaps even house-hunting in New York. As for his constituents in Witney, well they will have to start searching for a new MP.