Born to lead—but where?

David Cameron may be the Conservative party’s most successful leader since 1997, but doubts linger about whether he’s a traditional shire Tory or a liberal moderniser

by Wendell Steavenson / April 25, 2010 / Leave a comment
Published in May 2010 issue of Prospect Magazine

Turn right off the Oxford ring road towards the middling, contented, unremarkable town of Witney. There’s a small industrial park on the outskirts, cul-de-sacs of anonymous new housing, rows of pretty stone textile workers cottages and a church with a tall storybook steeple. The high street is lined with the usual chain stores interspersed with Tudoresque pubs; the new Marriotts Walk shopping centre has a multiplex, with Starbucks coming soon. On Saturdays there is a market: tracksuits and fleeces, fruit and veg, pic ’n’ mix. Three old men with flying white hair and pinched March wind faces, one bent over an aluminium walking stick, rummage in a plastic bin for tweed flat caps.

There’s not much to complain about in Witney. One of the more contentious local issues this spring was the lack of allotments. The crime rate is one of the lowest in the Thames Valley (although there is plenty of disquiet in the Witney Gazette about the yobbishness in the town centre on a Saturday night), and the council tax is one of the lowest in the country. The credit crunch hit but glanced off: most people made redundant could find another job, if perhaps not as well paid.

Witney is one of the most rural parliamentary constituencies. The town is in the south; drive north, and you find yourself in England’s green and pleasant land. If the weather is good, sunshine will burnish the Cotswolds stone yellow and you can brave an outside table at one of the tea shoppes in the postcard-pretty towns of Banbury or Chipping Norton.

“We’ve got all the usual issues of rural life,” explained Barry Norton, leader of the West Oxfordshire District Council. “Services and facilities under threat: post offices, the village shop. We’re always fighting to get the ambulance response times to meet their targets.”

Shaun Woodward took over as Conservative MP for Witney in 1997, when Douglas Hurd retired. Married to a Sainsbury and ensconced in the stately Sarsden House (which he sold in 2006 for a reported £24m), he had seemed a good sort. But in 1999 Woodward crossed the floor and joined Labour, ostensibly in protest at his party’s illiberalism on gay rights. His sudden defection traumatised the local Tories.

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Comments

The Great Unwashed
May 6, 2010 at 18:21
TO BOLDY GO! According to my copy of your magazine Our Dave is so determined to find his place in history that he has travelled back and forth in time to engineer it. In my copy of your article, Doctor Dave was 'born in 1996' but was able to travel 4 years before he was born in order to brief 'John Major in the 1992 election and worked as a special advisor to Norman Lamont in the treasury ... He fought the Tory-held seat of Salford but lost in the 1997 land-slide' only a year after he was born. He was so unconvinced of his leadership qualities that he travelled back into the past to ensure his younger Pre-Etonian and Pre-Bullingdon self had the 'experience, connections and charm and won selection' as a member of what you call the Political Class. At 5 years old he 'entered parliament in 2001, unexpectedly seized the party leadership after its 2005 election defeat', presumably because he saw it as his birthright. In a brilliantly thought out strike against the vagaries of Broken Britain he took up smoking before the age of 12, but made up for it in a grand gesture of denial in 2007. Only time will tell.
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Penvronius Miles Cambrensis
May 14, 2010 at 23:42
There is now no party which represents the needs and interests of ordinary working people. At least in New Labour there were still some people close to working class people - but there are none in government now. A recent report revealed that even during the recession the top earners wealth increased by a third. Things will get worse - the Health Service will be further privatised and access to health services cut especially for older people. Schools will be taking away from local council control and run by parents who are amateurs in terms of any real knowledge of the educational process. Britain will be part of the Third World with more poverty, crime and disease and social unrest. Theresa May will turnt this country into a Police State. Only the wealthy have a decent future in this Tory/Liberal Democrat political landscape. Even Melanie Philipps, a prime writer for the Tory Press decried the anti-liberal idea of 5 year fixed term parliaments during Question Time this week. I thank God I am retired and not having to work - under Thatcher our students numbers were doubled - under Cameron things will be even worse - Like Blair, Cameron is only the public face of the elite plutocrats who actually control this nation, and even further restraints to their ever increasing greed will be removed. We already have the lowest pensions in Western Europe, the lowest wages, the longest working hours, the least public holidays. So what's new? There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth because no-one except the wealthiest will be able to afford dentists! It has already been muted that the Freedom Pass will be removed from Pensioners - which is another broken promise. It is not so much Cameron as the enemy of ordinary people within the body politic that will make slaves of all but the few.
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