David Cameron

• 1. Introduction

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  David Cameron walked away from 10 Downing Street on the 13th of July 2016, humming a tune that a nearby microphone picked up. His final words in the House of Commons that day were a callback to something he had said to Tony Blair eleven years earlier: "I was the future once." It was a line that captured both his self-awareness and his predicament. Cameron had come to power promising modernisation and left behind a country that had just voted to leave the European Union in a referendum he had called himself. His name had become shorthand for a spectacular political miscalculation. But the story of how he got there, and what he built along the way, is considerably more complicated than that single day suggests. How did a stockbroker's son educated at Eton end up leading the first UK coalition government since the Second World War? What drove him to hold a referendum he believed he would win? And what has he done with the decade since? Those questions sit at the centre of one of the most consequential premierships of the early twenty-first century.

• 2. Roots and Formation

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  Cameron was born on the 9th of October 1966 at the London Clinic in Marylebone, and raised in Peasemore, Berkshire. His father, Ian Donald Cameron, was a stockbroker who himself was born at Blairmore House near Huntly in Aberdeenshire, a property built by Cameron's great-great-grandfather Alexander Geddes, who had made a fortune in the grain trade in Chicago before returning to Scotland in the 1880s. On his mother's side, Cameron descends from King William IV and his mistress Dorothea Jordan, through their illegitimate daughter Lady Elizabeth FitzClarence, making him sixth cousin once removed to King Charles III.

  At the age of seven, Cameron entered Heatherdown School in Winkfield, Berkshire, where his grades placed him in the top academic class almost two years early. He moved to Eton College at thirteen, following his father and elder brother Alexander. Six weeks before his O-levels, he was caught smoking cannabis; he admitted the offence, was fined, barred from leaving the school grounds, and assigned a "Georgic" requiring him to copy 500 lines of Latin text. He passed twelve O-levels and three A levels, earning three A grades and a top scholarship-level mark in Economics and Politics.

  After leaving Eton in 1984, Cameron spent a nine-month gap year divided across several unusual experiences. For three months he worked as a researcher for his godfather Tim Rathbone, the Conservative MP for Lewes. His father then arranged a placement with Jardine Matheson in Hong Kong, where Cameron held an administrative post described as "ship jumper." After Hong Kong, he visited the Soviet Union, where two Russian men speaking fluent English approached him; a professor later told him it was "definitely an attempt" by the KGB to recruit him. In October 1985 he began a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Brasenose College, Oxford. His tutor, Vernon Bogdanor, called him "one of the ablest" students he had taught, with "moderate and sensible Conservative" political views. A fellow tutorial student, Guy Spier, recalled: "David, there was nobody else who came even close. He would be integrating them with the way the British political system is put together."

  At Oxford, Cameron joined the Bullingdon Club, an all-male dining society with a reputation for elitism and damage to property. In his 2019 memoir For the Record, he wrote about the club's famous photograph: "When I look now at the much-reproduced photograph taken of our group of appallingly over-self-confident 'sons of privilege', I cringe." Among his fellow members at the time was Boris Johnson, who would also become prime minister. Cameron graduated in 1988 with a first-class BA degree. His tutor Bogdanor later offered a notably cooler assessment when Cameron proposed replacing the Human Rights Act with a Bill of Rights in 2006, calling the speech "filled with contradictions" and suggesting that any good ideas were glimpsed "through a mist of misunderstanding."

• 3. The Apprentice Years

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  Cameron joined the Conservative Research Department in September 1988, six months after graduating, and stayed there until 1993. His first brief covered Trade and Industry, Energy and Privatisation. With colleagues including Edward Llewellyn, Ed Vaizey, and Rachel Whetstone, he became part of a group the press called the "Brat Pack", later better known as the "Notting Hill set".

  In 1991, Cameron was seconded to Downing Street to prepare John Major for Prime Minister's Questions, and one newspaper credited him with sharpening Major's performances at the despatch box. He was later identified as a candidate for the role of political secretary to the prime minister, but lost out to Jonathan Hill, who was appointed in March 1992. Instead Cameron ran the economic section of Major's 1992 general election campaign, working between twelve and twenty hours a day and sleeping in Alan Duncan's house in Gayfere Street, Westminster. It was during this campaign that Cameron first worked closely with Steve Hilton, who would later become Director of Strategy during Cameron's own party leadership.

  Following the Conservatives' unexpected 1992 victory, Cameron was rewarded with a promotion to special adviser to Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont. He was in the role on Black Wednesday, when currency speculators forced the pound out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. When Lamont was sacked at the end of May 1993, Cameron was tasked with issuing a press statement of self-justification on his behalf.

  Home Secretary Michael Howard specifically recruited Cameron after Lamont's dismissal. Cameron was considerably more socially liberal than Howard but worked effectively for him, often briefing the media. In July 1994 he left government entirely to become Director of Corporate Affairs at Carlton Communications, the media company suggested for the role to Carlton's executive chairman Michael P. Green by Cameron's future mother-in-law, Lady Astor. He resigned from Carlton in February 2001 to run for Parliament, though he remained on the payroll as a consultant.

  Cameron had first attempted to enter Parliament at the 1997 general election, standing in Stafford. He lost to Labour's David Kidney by 24,606 votes to 20,292. He was finally selected for the safe Conservative seat of Witney in Oxfordshire in April 2000, after the sitting MP Shaun Woodward had crossed the floor to Labour. In the 2001 general election, Cameron won Witney with a 1.9% swing to the Conservatives, taking 22,153 votes against Labour's 14,180.

• 4. Winning the Leadership

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  When Michael Howard announced his resignation as Conservative leader following Labour's May 2005 general election victory, Cameron declared his candidacy on the 29th of September 2005. Early support came from Boris Johnson, shadow chancellor George Osborne, and former party leader William Hague. His campaign did not gather significant momentum until he delivered a speech without notes at the 2005 Conservative Party Conference, vowing to make people "feel good about being Conservatives again." The Daily Telegraph praised the speech, saying the lack of notes "showed a sureness and a confidence that is greatly to his credit."

  In the first ballot of Conservative MPs on the 18th of October 2005, Cameron came second with 56 votes; David Davis led with 62; Liam Fox took third with 42; and Kenneth Clarke was eliminated with 38. In the second ballot two days later, Cameron came first with 90 votes, Davis second with 57, and Fox was eliminated with 51. The subsequent membership vote produced a decisive result: Cameron won 134,446 votes on a 78% turnout, compared with Davis's 64,398, more than double his rival's tally. Cameron's election as leader was announced on the 6th of December 2005.

  The reaction from across politics was skeptical. Private Eye ran a cover image of Cameron and Tony Blair side by side, captioned "World's first face transplant a success." The New Statesman likened his approach to Blair's early leadership years. Conservative traditionalist Norman Tebbit compared Cameron to Pol Pot, describing him as "intent on purging even the memory of Thatcherism." Quentin Davies, who defected to Labour in June 2007, called Cameron "superficial, unreliable" and accused him of turning the party's mission into a "PR agenda." During the leadership contest, allegations also emerged that Cameron had used cannabis and cocaine before entering politics; on the BBC programme Question Time, he said that everybody was allowed to "err and stray" in their past.

  As leader of the opposition, Cameron withdrew Conservative MEPs from the European People's Party group and worked to form a new grouping with right-wing and Eurosceptic parties, primarily in eastern Europe. In July 2006 he reached an agreement with the Czech Civic Democratic Party, and in 2009 the European Conservatives and Reformists group was formally established with 54 MEPs drawn from eight EU member states. EPP leader Wilfried Martens, the former prime minister of Belgium, responded sharply: "I can't understand his tactics. Merkel and Sarkozy will never accept his Euroscepticism."

• 5. A Coalition in Power

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  The 2010 general election left the Conservatives as the largest party with 306 seats, twenty short of a majority, producing the first hung parliament since February 1974. Negotiations with Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg produced a formal coalition. On the 11th of May 2010, Elizabeth II invited Cameron to form a government following Gordon Brown's resignation. At forty-three, Cameron became the youngest prime minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812, beating the record Tony Blair had set in May 1997.

  The coalition controlled 363 seats in the House of Commons, a majority of 76. In his first address outside 10 Downing Street, Cameron cited a "strong and stable government" built on "rebuilding family, rebuilding community, above all, rebuilding responsibility." He appointed Clegg as deputy prime minister the same day.

  His government inherited the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. In June 2010, Cameron described the economic situation as "even worse than we thought." The administration's response was an austerity programme of sustained reductions in public spending, amounting to approximately 5% of GDP over the coalition period, while protecting day-to-day budgets for the NHS, education, and international development. Tax changes included a rise in VAT from 17.5% to 20%, and cuts to corporation tax from 28% to 19%. By 2015, the structural deficit as a percentage of GDP had roughly halved relative to 2010, and unemployment fell from around 7.9% to about 5.5% as employment grew by roughly 2.45 million jobs. National debt, however, rose from approximately 71% of GDP in 2010 to around 84% by 2016.

  Beyond the economy, the coalition passed the Health and Social Care Act and the Welfare Reform Act, introduced the Universal Credit system and the so-called "bedroom tax," privatised Royal Mail, and implemented the Equality Act. Cameron also championed the legalisation of same-sex marriage in England and Wales, even though more of his own Conservative MPs voted against the measure than for it; the support of Liberal Democrat and Labour MPs was required to pass it.

  In education, the number of academies rose from 203 at the start of his premiership to over 4,600 by mid-2014, with more than half of secondary schools operating under academy status by mid-2013. Cameron introduced the pupil premium in 2011, directing additional per-pupil funding toward schools serving students eligible for free school meals. A December 2014 initiative allocated £67 million to retrain approximately 15,000 teachers in STEM subjects.

  Constitutionally, Cameron's tenure produced three referendums on the UK's future. The May 2011 vote on an alternative voting system rejected the change. The 2014 Scottish independence referendum returned a result that confirmed the union. And the 2016 vote on European Union membership did not.

• 6. Foreign Policy and Libya

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  On the 17th of March 2011, the United Nations Security Council approved a no-fly zone over Libya after weeks of lobbying by the UK and its allies. Two days later, the UK and the United States fired more than 110 Tomahawk missiles at targets in the country. Cameron said he was "proud" of the UK's role in Gaddafi's overthrow, and pushed back against predictions that post-Gaddafi Libya would become an "enormous swamp of Islamists and extremists."

  A subsequent inquiry by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, conducted in 2015 and 2016, reached sharply different conclusions. It found that the early threat to civilians had been overstated, that the significant Islamist element among rebel forces had not been recognised due to an intelligence failure, and that by mid-2011 a limited protective intervention had become a policy of regime change without proper support for a successor government. The committee concluded that Cameron bore ultimate responsibility for the policy failure. US president Barack Obama, in an interview with The Atlantic, acknowledged that Cameron had allowed himself to be "distracted by a range of other things."

  In Syria, Cameron became the first prime minister since 1782 to lose a foreign policy vote in the House of Commons when, in August 2013, MPs rejected proposed bombing of Syrian armed forces in response to the Ghouta chemical attack. In September 2014, Parliament approved British air strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq. Following the Paris attacks of November 2015, Cameron made the case for extending those strikes to Syria. On the 3rd of December 2015, MPs voted 397 to 223 in favour; all but seven Conservative MPs supported the motion, along with 66 Labour MPs who voted against their own leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

  In January 2015, Cameron travelled to Riyadh following the death of Saudi King Abdullah. According to WikiLeaks, Cameron had initiated a deal ensuring both the UK and Saudi Arabia were elected to the UN Human Rights Council. His government also announced "firm political support" for the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, including weapons supplies and training.

  Cameron visited Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka, becoming the first foreign leader to visit the war-affected town since the island's independence in 1948. He called for an independent investigation into alleged war crimes during the final stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War, and said that if one was not completed by March 2014 he would push for an international inquiry.

• 7. Brexit and the End

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  The Conservatives won an unexpected outright majority on the 7th of May 2015, the first Conservative majority since 1992. Cameron became the first prime minister to be re-elected immediately after a full term with a larger popular vote share since Lord Salisbury at the 1900 general election.

  A referendum on EU membership had been promised in the election manifesto. Cameron campaigned for Britain to remain in a "reformed EU," and terms of membership were renegotiated, with agreement reached in February 2016. The referendum was held on the 23rd of June 2016. The result was approximately 52% in favour of leaving and 48% against, on a turnout of 72%. The following morning, Cameron announced his intention to resign.

  In his statement outside Downing Street the next day, he said: "I do not think it would be right for me to try to be the captain that steers our country to its next destination." Parliament's Foreign Affairs Select Committee was later told that Cameron had refused to allow the Civil Service to make contingency plans for Brexit, a decision the committee described as "an act of gross negligence." In an opinion piece in The Independent, Matthew Norman called the referendum an act of "indescribably selfish recklessness."

  Cameron formally resigned on the afternoon of the 13th of July 2016, after Theresa May was confirmed as the new Conservative leader following Andrea Leadsom's withdrawal from the contest. His final words in the Commons were: "I was the future once." On the 12th of September, he resigned his seat, and fellow Conservative Robert Courts succeeded him as MP for Witney.

  In his 2019 memoir For the Record, published through HarperCollins on the 19th of September 2019, Cameron wrote that his aim was to "correct the record" where he thought it was wrong. He was reportedly paid £800,000 for the book. On Brexit, he later told The Times he knew "some people will never forgive me," and confessed: "Every single day I think about it, and the fact that we lost, and the consequences, and the things that could have been done differently, and I worry desperately."

  He also became embroiled in the Greensill scandal. During his premiership, financier Lex Greensill had been an unpaid advisor with access to eleven government departments. By 2018, Cameron had become a paid advisor to Greensill Capital, holding share options reportedly worth as much as $60 million and receiving over $1 million each year for twenty-five days' work. A Panorama investigation found that, through a combination of salary and share sales, Cameron earned around $10 million before tax for thirty months of part-time work. In 2019, Cameron arranged a private meeting between Greensill and Health Secretary Matt Hancock; several NHS trusts subsequently used Greensill Capital's Earnd app. In November 2023, Rishi Sunak appointed Cameron Foreign Secretary, a role that required him to become Baron Cameron of Chipping Norton and join the House of Lords as a life peer, the first Foreign Secretary to sit in the Lords for decades. He held the post until the Conservatives lost the 2024 general election.