David Cameron: The highs and lowdown

David Cameron; The highs and the lowdown.

David Cameron is a very good constituency M P, and the one for this slice of Blairy England. Even though he holds very different views to this author, he does a better job of serving local people than I could ever do. He was very supportive and helpful in my problems with a corporate ogre I fell foul of.
     But he is now set to lead the Tory party, and may even be the next Prime Minister. Naturally, he has been less responsive to my e-mails than he was before he entered the leadership race. But he was the only local politician other than the green woman who took my open meeting on democracy seriously back in July. He did not come, of course, but he showed an interest. He fielded my daughter deftly when she questioned him about the Iraq war, face to face in his local surgery, but he did not fool her. He openly admired her determination in challenging him.
     He was by far the best MP candidate at our UNA meetings before the election.
But he placed the needs of motorists before the needs of the global environment.
In terms of the big issues I find that he flatters to deceive.
     He took up my invitation to tackle the Government on the Downing Street Memo, or I thought he had. But after several months waiting, all I received back was a letter from Mr Ingram, the junior defence minister, saying that all the Governments interventions in Iraq before the official start of the war were appropriate and legal. This is about as far as it gets from an answer from the Prime Minister about conspiring with George Bush to invade Iraq.  I take this as an offer of a sop to Cerberus. It has stopped me pushing him for more action, out of expectations reducing to none. Tory Blair, as he is now being dubbed, might as well be a member of the Government already.
     I have not approached him on educational matters despite all my problems with local schooling. I may well regret a lost opportunity now that he is very close to leaving all that behind him.
     A few months ago on Today he was a bit hesitant, a bit unsure. He has come a long way in a short time. I wrote that I thought he should back Clarke and the anti Iraq line. He did not reply to that. My concerns are that he stands for surfaces and has nothing much to stand up for but rebranding. I am not sure he offers the Tories real hope. He does not offer the country a real alternative to Blairy England, from anything I have seen yet. I hope I am wrong.
     David Cameron comes over as a decent human being beyond all the spin and polish. That is not something I could ever say about Mr Blair. But I see nothing yet to suggest he offers a better way ahead than Mr Brown.