SELDON: DAWN SECRETS OF THE ZEN PM
Up at 5.30am, done by 7.30am, living in ‘a bubble of tranquillity’ with Sam: The man behind the biography of the year gives his insight into...
LISTENING to Sir Anthony Seldon, you could get the impression there is little point in Whitehall’s army of Ministers and mandarins turning up each day. David Cameron has done all the work before they even get to their desks.
‘The work of this Government is done substantially by Cameron between 5.30am and 7.30am on the settee of the No 10 flat with a Red box on his lap while the rest of the world is sleeping,’ Seldon asserts breezily.
The rest of the day is taken up merely ‘handling’ the decisions the Prime Minister made on his settee before his Shredded Wheat.
‘He is a very unruffled, “Zen” Prime Minister, inwardly calm and self-controlled,’ says Seldon, Britain’s most distinguished political biographer and author of Cameron At 10. He is affronted by the popular notion that Cameron is the ‘chillaxing’ PM: that he flies by the seat of his pants, spends too much time surfing, and is overly fond of a glass or three of Chablis.
‘Chillaxing, such a good word, so hard to dislodge,’ ruminates Seldon, former Master of leading independent school, Wellington College, irritated that such a brash, unscholarly thought can take root – and without his headmasterly permission too.
Cameron is, in fact, ‘hyper-intelligent, moral and thoughtful’ and one of the reasons he can make decisions in an instant, (giving him time to ‘chillax’), is precisely because he is ‘very careful about what he drinks.’ The reason he stays relaxed and sane is down to wife Sam, not a glass of wine.
‘No10 can take marriages apart,’ states Seldon. ‘She has not been given proper credit as a key part of the psychological equipment that keeps him so steady.
‘She has created a bubble of tranquillity in the No10 flat, an island where he can be with his family. He loves to pop up to be with her for lunch or supper.’
Seldon believes Sam was inadvertently responsible for Cameron blurting out during an Election campaign interview in the kitchen of his constituency home in Oxfordshire that serving a third term would be like eating three Shredded Wheat – one too many.
Cameron ‘finds it harder to conceal the full truth when she is present,’ writes Seldon.
Was that meant to imply that the PM, derided as a ‘slippery’ former PR man by cynics, is prone to fib when she isn’t at his side to keep him honest? Seldon frowns with lofty disdain.
The book is broadly pro-Cameron but he is not blind to his faults. He is severely critical of aspects of Cameron’s foreign policy, lambasts his ‘abject judgment’ over jailed spin doctor Andy Coulson, savages his ‘cocked-up’ NHS reforms, and says he was ‘over-impetuous’ at first. But he maintains that, barely into his second term, Cameron has already outperformed three-term Blair.
‘It was much easier for Blair. The commentariat thought he was wonderful, he inherited a strong economy, a united party and big
Cameron is thoughtful, and can make decisions in an instant He admires Thatcher’s strength... “the Lady’s not for turning”
Commons majorities. With all those advantages he achieved less than Cameron has.’
Cameron has embarked on his second term with ‘brutal energy’ and Seldon thinks that perversely, the unexpected nature of his victory in May could be the making of him.
‘He didn’t expect it, so did no deep thinking. You often find the more intensely a government has prepared for office, the less good it is.’
He cites the governments of Heath in 1970 and Blair-Brown as examples of over-rehearsed flops.
A second major theme in his book – which he co-wrote with Peter Snowdon – is the strength of Cameron’s relations with George Osborne. It reveals Cameron was ‘angry’ with his No 11 neighbour over the ‘omnishambles Budget’ of 2012; overruled him on the mansion tax, and had to fight to win the Chancellor’s support for an EU referendum. Yet for all that, they are still the ‘strongest political coupling’ of any Downing Street neighbours for a century, claims Seldon.
‘You can have a brilliant PM and a brilliant Chancellor who don’t have complementary talents; you can have two who do have complementary talents, but to have two such people who get on so extraordinarily well is incredible.
‘For 96 per cent of the time they are aligned with each other. By the end, Blair and Brown were malaligned 96 per cent of the time.’
Seldon savours the word. ‘Malaligned’ is a dentist’s term for wonky teeth, usually jagged.
Seldon says the Chancellor is capable of succeeding Cameron when the time comes, but only because of a dramatic transformation and after his ‘humiliation’ in the ‘omnishambles Budget’ and subsequent booing at the London Olympics.
‘He has mellowed, become less tribal, deeper, more reflective. He was riding the crest of a wave and the wave broke.
‘He was beginning to question his own judgment. It was a long, excoriating process, hugely important to him in a similar way that the death of Ivan was important to Cameron.’
It may seem an odd parallel. But Seldon’s book is based on hours of private one-to-one discussions with Cameron, Osborne and other key members of their inner circle.
Seldon informs them in advance what he is going to say about them in a Chilcot-style ‘Maxwellisation’ process. Critics say it makes him too close to his subjects: perfectionist Seldon counters it ensures much greater accuracy. Like Chilcot.
There is something Zen-like about Seldon himself, who pioneered ‘wellbeing lessons’ at Wellington. He has the unruly hair of most academics. But few wear the closefitting navy blue ‘two-tone’ suit that accentuates his mannequin frame and which would not have looked out of place in a 1960s gathering of Mods on the prom in Brighton, Seldon’s home city.
Quirky, but saintly too, he gives profits from his prime ministerial biographies to charity because he is driven by a ‘passionate belief in deepening the knowledge and understanding of political leadership.’
He spent most of our hour-long interview at his office at University of Buckingham, where he is vicechancellor, with his eyes shut tight, h hands arched in concentration, selecting words like orbs from the universe of his vast political intellect without distraction from earth- lings. I managed a rare interruption when he said the two policies most hated by traditional Tories – gay marriage and overseas aid – are the two Cameron will never give up.
‘One of the things he admired about T Thatcher was her strength and fixi ity, “the Lady’s not for turning...”’
She would have dumped gay marr riage and overseas aid straight a away, I butted in.
Seldon sails on serenely: ‘...Cameron has the political nous to know that having come out with it, he had to stick to it.’
As for who succeeds ‘Cameron At 10’, Seldon, 62, who has known every Prime Minister since Edward Heath, suggests a reborn Osborne, ‘dignified and strong’ Theresa May, or ‘Churchillian’ Boris Johnson are all worthy potential heirs.
Johnson is another source of unity in the harmonious portrait of Cameron and Osborne painted by Seldon. He scares and annoys them in equal measure, sporadically shaking their Downing Street windows like a distant thunderclap.
Wordsmith Seldon’s book is full of adjectives they have used to describe him, mostly unprintable in a family newspaper.
Churchillian is not one of them.
Cameron At 10: The Inside Story 2010-2015 by Anthony Seldon and Peter Snowdon is published on September 10 by William Collins, priced £20. Offer price £15 (25 per cent discount) until September 13. Pre-order at www.mailbookshop.co.uk, p&p is free on orders over £12.