Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens casts a caustic eye over the rise of David Cameron and his first year as Tory leader. Hitchens traces Cameron’s career, from his days in the Bullingdon dining club at Oxford University, through his period as a back-room boy at Conservative Central Office, to his first attempt to enter parliament at Stafford in 1997. He searches in vain for the intellectual roots of the Cameron revolution, discovering a politician who, until very recently, presented himself as a thoroughly, conventional rural Tory, hardline on law and order and with mainstream Tory views on homosexuality.
Hitchens picks apart the process by which Cameron won the leadership of the Conservative Party in the autumn of 2005, focusing on the role of outgoing leader, Michael Howard, and of the media in propelling him to power. He reveals that it was not until September 2005, half-way through the leadership campaign, that Cameron began to push a modernizing agenda -and then only because he was facing defeat at the hands of David Davis. He deconstructs the rebranding of the Conservative Party over the last year, exposing the prominent role played within the leadership team by PR guru, Steve Hilton, and revealing the degree to which Cameron has slavishly copied the tactics pursued by New Labour a decade ago.
Hitchens argues the Tory move to the so-called centre ground carries grave risks for the British political system. “British politics is based not on consensus but on adversarialism - two distinct and different sides, representing real and passionate divisions within the country. Without that difference there can be no choice, without that choice there can be no liberty,” he says.
Presented by Peter Hitchens
Produced & Directed by Richard Sanders
Executive Producer Samir Shah
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk
