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To his critics on right of the Tory party, David Cameron is a modern-day Ted Heath: an energetic young politician with a veneer of electoral appeal, but lacking the iron to make tough decisions, and with a tendency to triangulate—that Blairite technique for making policy only in the centre-ground. His sometimes detached relationship with his parliamentary party, his propensity to consult a meagre team of trusted advisers, and his association with fashionable lifestyles all match Heath too. Just as Cameron’s wife Samantha, the creative director of Smythson, designed one of 2007’s “must-have” handbags, Heath was asked on becoming leader in 1965 by the Sunday Times: “Do you appreciate that you are the first Tory leader with wall-to-wall carpeting?”
Even before Gordon Brown’s electoral humiliations in June, Cameron’s critics on the right thought the backdrop of a global recession and Labour party strife had prevented a proper examination of the Tory leader. Labour now uses a similar argument to explain Cameron’s successes during the expenses debacle: scandal always hits the government hardest. The prime minister’s uneven response and the mass resignations around the European election only made Cameron look better by comparison.
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