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.
Yet two months after the Daily Telegraph's first receipts story was published on 7th May, it seems neither right nor left does justice to Cameron's performance. The grubbier details of his own mortgage subsidies had the potential to damage his reputation, especially compared with the frugal Gordon Brown. Nearly one third of the shadow cabinet were under threat: not just education spokesman Michael Gove (who spent £7,000 of public money on a London property*) but also Oliver Letwin and Francis Maude. And the rococo particulars of moat-cleaning and portico-building posed a real danger to a rejuvenated Conservative brand. Taxpayers could easily have felt that the Tories failed to practise the same thrift with public funds that they often call for in the public sector. Unlike Brown, Cameron was unable to delegate reform to standards committee chairman Christopher Kelly, leaving him more exposed and more powerless. Yet his actions still won round public opinion and showed him capable of the ruthlessness and decisiveness under pressure required of a prime minister.
Cameron decided early on an approach different to that of the government (which at the time claimed expenses reform had already taken place) or that desired by worried backbenchers (who wanted the issue to go away). Over a series of long meetings in his Commons office, Cameron worked up a plan that would play out over the next month and a half. His advisers jokingly called it the "Blairite masochism strategy": Cameron would go out of his way to face up to public anger. Even before most of the damaging revelations about his party were aired on 9th May, the press had been briefed that all Tory MPs would have to "explain why they've claimed what they've claimed."
On 12th May the Tories went one step further. Cameron's day began one hour earlier than usual, at 8.15am. His diary cleared, a succession of shadow cabinet members trooped in. Those whose claims were deemed questionable were then ushered into an office with a party accountant. Between them they negotiated the funds to be paid back. Later that day Steve Hilton, the marketing svengali and architect of Cameron's project, fine-tuned a lunchtime press briefing, in which Cameron said his cabinet would repay dubious claims. The Independent's Steve Richards recognised the tactic, saying: "Blair would have done exactly what Cameron did yesterday." At a parliamentary party meeting later the same day, senior Conservatives, already cowed by public outrage, also seemed impressed.
The insulation Cameron wrapped around his cabinet did not extend to everyone. Revelations of "double-dipping" or claiming for both constituency and London homes from Andrew MacKay and Julie Kirkbride saw Cameron order both husband and wife to "face their constituents." They resigned their seats within the month, while Cameron tried to abate growing public anger by publishing the shadow cabinet's expenses on the internet.
Throughout Cameron relied on a tight band of advisers, chief among them George Osborne, who spur on his more buccaneering instincts—for instance the replacement of a planned European election broadcast with a further apology. Hilton's presence was equally important; despite living in Los Angeles, he happened to be in London throughout the month of the crisis. Andy Coulson, the former tabloid editor who runs Cameron's press team, kept up a constant refrain: "What would the man in the street think?"
This group remained in London while Cameron went on the campaign trail, but travelled regularly to their leader's constituency home in Oxfordshire to fine-tune the party line. Cameron, aware of the need to set an example, faced his own constituents on 22nd May at the Witney corn market. Scheduled for high noon, it was a bravura exercise in contrition. He even apologised for claiming money—£680—to trim a wisteria and making other repairs. Asked whether his own claims were fair given his wife's fortune (reputed to be around £30m) Cameron joked: "If so, I'd love to know what she's done with it," while admitting that he had still claimed "close to the maximum" second home allowance. He escaped with a well timed quip, very much in the Blair manner.
Luck played a part too. Cameron benefited from a scatter-gun Telegraph approach that imposed no hierarchy of guilt. At that Witney meeting, for example, he didn't have to mention paying off a £75,000 loan on his London home just months after taking out a £350,000 mortgage in his constituency—a fact that emerged in News of the World ten days later. Cameron's handling of his own expenses, while certainly a triumph of media management, drew contrasting reactions from angry backbenchers. Some accused him of double standards. As one put it: "If you've spent like David you're OK, but heaven help you if you haven't."
In a speech on 26th May Cameron tried to turn apology into policy, outlining a "radical redistribution of power from Westminster" as the answer to the crisis, including fixed-term parliaments and publishing government spending details online. Some of these policies were already established policy but others were hastily borrowed from The Plan, a book by two radical Tory thinkers, Douglas Carswell MP and Daniel Hannan MEP. The duo do not usually enjoy the embrace of their party's leadership, but their ideas, including a secret ballot to elect the Speaker and select committee chairs, were duly floated.
Whether such ideas will last remains open to question. Returning to the Heath analogy, Cameron could yet become "Selsdon man"—the nickname Harold Wilson gave the Tory leader when policy ideas vanished as Heath entered Downing Street in 1970. Yet the expenses crisis has shown Cameron newly confident in his ability to read public opinion, and with a new command of his party. At a drinks party in his office to celebrate their European election successes in early June, Cameron told MPs that expenses was something "they have to get right." The members cheered their redeemer. Many might not have agreed with his approach, but as one of those invited put it, they "have all now acquiesced."
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* This sentence has been amended to correct an error in the print version of this article.
