THE LOS ANGELES TIMES: In a nation where class issues often determine how people vote, David Cameron is campaigning for prime minister as an ordinary bloke.
Reporting from Peasemore, England
The man who may be Britain's next leader grew up in a spacious country home in this village of thatched roofs, green fields and classic red phone boxes, playing tennis on the family court and joining the occasional foxhunt.
He got his university degree from Oxford, where he belonged to an exclusive club of young men with a reputation for wearing tails and drinking to excess.
His closest political ally is the son of a baronet, and Queen Elizabeth is a distant cousin.
David Cameron, 43, who first won public office just nine years ago, is a strong contender to become the first Conservative prime minister since 1997 when Britons go to the polls May 6. Out on the campaign trail, he cheerfully promises to usher in a modern, compassionate conservatism that will help Britons help themselves.
What Cameron can't help, though, is his privileged upbringing — and the fact that, even in 21st century Britain, after the free-market revolution of Margaret Thatcher and the "Cool Britannia" of Tony Blair, questions of class still infuse this society like tea in water.
That's one reason why Liam Didsbury can't imagine voting Conservative, no matter how hard Cameron may try to downplay his past and sell himself as an ordinary bloke.
" British people don't like to see posh people pretend not to be who they are," said Didsbury, a Labor Party supporter in the northern English working-class town of Rochdale.
Didsbury described Cameron as a blue-blooded Tory "who's been to Eton" — Britain's toniest prep school — and "went to Oxford."
And not just him. His "front bench," the fellow Tories who would form his Cabinet if Cameron becomes prime minister, is stacked with other privately educated individuals from wealthy, even aristocratic, backgrounds.
Such facts don't go unnoticed here, even if class divisions aren't as rigid as they once were in a nation still peopled with dukes, earls, countesses, knights and dames. Experts say class remains one of the strongest determinants of how voters cast their ballots, an enduring force never far below the surface of the British psyche.
That explains why Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the Labor Party, who is trailing badly in the polls, trumpets himself as a product and champion of the middle class. And why Nick Clegg, the head of the Liberal Democrats, a smaller party that has recently surged in popularity, skates lightly over his education at an expensive prep school and Cambridge.
The preoccupation with class turned a spoof "campaign poster" of Brown challenging Cameron to "step outside, posh boy," into an instant hit. (The Guardian newspaper gag also poked fun at Brown's alleged anger-management issues.) Another takeoff paired Cameron's tanned and smiling face with the statement, "Some of my best friends are poor."
Cameron makes no apology for his background and denies that it's any handicap to his electability. >>> Henry Chu, Los Angeles Times | Sunday, April 25, 2010
THE INDEPENDENT: Once upon a time, the Tory party set its face gainst gay rights. In the Cameron era, all that's changed. Or has it? Johann Hari puts the would-be PM in the firing line
The great mystery of British politics is striding into the room, 15 minutes ahead of schedule. In the flesh, David Cameron looks thinner and younger and smaller than on television. The caricaturists are wrong: his cheeks don't appear full and ruddy at all. He looks sleek, and wired, with an intense gaze. He knows he could be a few months from Downing Street and the history books – so he is here to woo a crucial electoral bloc that is wary of falling into his arms by giving an interview to Attitude, Britain's best-selling gay magazine. He calls for coffee and dispenses with the photographer briskly: he poses for two minutes before saying, "Right, that's enough," and walking out of the shot. He places himself on his sofa, in the shadow of Big Ben, and says: "Right. Let's start." >>> Johann Hari | Thursday, February 04, 2010
