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...
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 £1million 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’