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- [00:00]
George Eustice
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk.
- [00:06]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
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- [00:51]
James Landale
On this episode of Old Newscast, we're going to be looking back at the 2005 Conservative leadership contest. The contest would come down to two main candidates. On the one hand, David Davis, the more experienced, more traditional contender, the longtime Eurosceptic had been chairman of the Conservative Party under Ian Duncan. Smith. And Brexitcast fans will of course remember he would become the chief negotiator for exiting the European Union in 2016 when Theresa May was Prime minister. And on the other hand, David Cameron, the shadow education secretary in 2005 who was making a big pitch about modernizing his party. So what would happen? That's what we will be discussing in this episode of Old Newscast newscast newscast from the BBC.
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Podcast Advertiser/Host
Having a young, vigorous, energetic leader.
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Unidentified Political Commentator
I think I have a very clear
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George Eustice
idea of what the British people now
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Unidentified Political Commentator
expect from this government for a third term.
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George Eustice
I've said that if people don't deliver, they go. Various Tories did at one stage say,
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James Landale
yeah, I smoked the odd split.
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Podcast Advertiser/Host
Come to think of it, it's not
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Unidentified Political Commentator
such a bad idea.
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James Landale
James Landale is here. He is the diplomatic correspondent, obviously, but then was the chief political correspondent for the the BBC. Hello again, James.
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Unidentified Political Commentator
Hello.
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James Landale
And we're joined by George Eustace, who is David Cameron's press secretary. Hello again, George.
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George Eustice
Hello.
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James Landale
So Michael Howard has announced that he's standing down as leader of the Conservative Party, although doesn't go straight away so they have time for a contest. Lots of people are talking about throwing their hat in the ring, but it boils down to James, David Cameron or David Davis. Which David, which David do the Tories want?
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Unidentified Political Commentator
There were, I mean, before that there were. I mean, in terms of the actual election amongst the MPs, which is the process. You know, the MPs choose some, some candidates that then go to. That go to the party members. There was an actual vote amongst the mps, and I think there were four candidates. Is that right?
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George Eustice
Five in total.
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Unidentified Political Commentator
Five in total. So Kenneth Clark, the great former sort of, you know, Tory, sort of, you know, right and center, you know, sort of. Sort of the sort of pro European
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James Landale
loves Europe, loves jazz, loves cigars.
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Unidentified Political Commentator
Exactly. And then there was Liam Fox.
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George Eustice
Liam Fox. And then it was Malcolm Rifkind. Malcolm Rifkind and the two Davies and
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Unidentified Political Commentator
then the two Davids. And so there was a series, a series of elections amongst the members, amongst the mps, rather, and that whittled down to the two Davids. There was the usual mixture of skullduggery of who's, you know, who's lending which votes to which candidates, speculation to try and sort of, you know, because in the first ballot, I think David Davis came top, as in most most Conservative mps. But as the election went on, you know, David Davis's numbers did begin to drop. But, you know, there was, there was, though it wasn't automatically obvious that it would always go to the two Davis Davids.
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James Landale
Okay. And although it seems kind of inevitable now, doesn't it, with the benefit of hindsight, George, you would go on to become a Conservative MP, but at that point, Conservative MPs just love that. James called it skulduggery. They just love that stuff, don't they? People were really kind of enjoying it.
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George Eustice
Yeah, it's very hard. So a leadership campaign is an incredibly volatile. It's a very sort of volatile moment for a party where momentum can shift really quickly. So, you know, before you get to those formal votes in October, there was some, if you go back to June, we were hopeful that we would be the main challenger to David Davis. And if Michael Howard got his rule change through, well, then David Cameron would probably have a good chance. And that was the thinking and the idea. We'd worked out this whole plan that we would get more and more endorsements over the summer and the time we got to September, we'd be in a strong position. We had a program of loads of speeches. But what happened, of course, in July, I think you had the. The 77 terror attacks, and that really sort of sucked all the oxygen, for obvious reasons, out of any kind of discussion about Conservative Party. It meant that David Davis was on the media a lot, talking about the counterterrorism issue and the threat of terrorism. And our, Our campaign, although we had Lots of interesting speeches going on was pretty much eclipsed. And if you get to the sort of first week of. We were properly on the ropes because Ken Clark surprised everyone and declared that he was going to stand after all, when it had been presumed he probably wouldn't. That was just, I think, right at the end of August, beginning of September. And for that moment it was assumed that David Cameron would just drop out and fall in behind Ken Clark. In fact, he was never going to do that. But that was the presumption and it made it very difficult to get traction and get support. And then if you fast forward just
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James Landale
a few weeks, think that's what was going to happen.
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George Eustice
Yeah. Ken Clark, I think, rather assumed that, that once he stood, David Cameron would just row in behind him because he was the elder. He was the elder. He was sort of wrong on a number because David Cameron genuinely, I think if David Cameron was, was knocked out, he did sort of privately say once he actually wouldn't declare, he would go see it through to the end, wouldn't declare for anybody else, but would probably have voted for David Davis just on the basis that he didn't think the party could cope. Another kind of, you know, internal fractious argument about Europe, which is what Ken Clark would have, would have brought. So it was an interesting, interesting.
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James Landale
He didn't want to ever be. If in the case of him not winning, he didn't want to be the king maker, he just wanted to be a voter.
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George Eustice
And to be honest, he was also very realistic about his ability to carry his supporters somewhere else. You know, people go in all directions when, when a leader candidate, leisure candidates dropped out. But there was a, there was a period when, you know, even people who he thought would be fellow travelers of ours, like David Willits, you know, anybody who was thinking about their careers or hope to have a position in the sort of new regime, they were all starting to declare for David Davis. And there was a period in, you know, in sort of late August when it looked like David Davis might just get a coronation and then a period in early September where it looked like it was going to be Ken Clark versus David Davis. And we just, we struggled to get traction. We were completely on the ropes and it was then really we decided that you couldn't fight the tide, you just needed to hang on the ropes for a bit. And we decided to put all our, our emphasis, all our ammunition on the, the launch event. So not, not the party conference speech, but the week before we did a big launch event on exactly the same day. As David Davis, to try to frame that choice. And that turned out to be, you know, the master stroke, really, because that's what turned it around.
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Unidentified Political Commentator
Was that deliberate or was that just happenstance in terms of dates, booking places you don't have full control?
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George Eustice
No, well, I think, I think the truth is it was probably deliberate to
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James Landale
try and snooker David Davis.
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George Eustice
Well, I think, I think actually what happened is Andrew Mitchell, who was David Davis's campaign, approached George Osborne, who was David Cameron's campaign, to say, look, we really ought to coordinate this to make sure that we don't clash on the same day, and told them what day David Davis planned to launch. And then George Osborne said, oh, that's a shame, because that's the day we're launching as well. Because George Osborne's view was actually, you should run them head to head on the same day, different times, let the media go to David Davis's first thing and see what he's got to say. And then they can all just walk down the road to Rusi, which is where we were holding our launch event, and you can see the contrast, you can set up a proper contrast within the same news cycle. And that's, that's what we did. And it was done quite consciously in the end.
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James Landale
And James, did you do that walk?
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Unidentified Political Commentator
I did do that walk. And, and George. Right. The contrast was huge because you, the, the David Davis one was, was sort of quite formal and, you know, dark paneled rooms and traditional and, and, you know, lots of mps and things. And the Cameron one, I can remember, but simply because I just remembered sort of, just there were so many sort of people there. I didn't know there were personal friends of David Cameron. There were, there were, there was quite a large number of pregnant women in the, in the room. I just sort of, I just, it's just a fact, I just remember, which
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James Landale
would be unusual for a Westminster event.
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George Eustice
Yeah.
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Unidentified Political Commentator
And, and there were, I know that, you know, Steve Hilton had, who's one of David Cameron's people, had specific that they, they, they were agonizing about the food. They had smoothies.
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James Landale
Well, this event has become famous for smoothies.
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George Eustice
For smoothies, yeah. I mean, at that event, really, that, you know, the, the, the brilliance of Steve Hilton in these sorts of situations really played a role. Steve had just a natural sort of brilliance of these things, so just an ability to sort of pinpoint the, the zeitgeist and get a sense of a cultural mood. And so he put a huge amount of emphasis to getting, getting the lighting right, getting it Professional getting. Getting the right audience there. So it felt right.
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James Landale
And James, I'm just thinking about another launch not from that year, but quite soon afterwards, which shows you when things that might seem superficial, like the setup of the room, go wrong. And it was when Gordon Brown basically launched himself becoming Prime Minister. And you remember it was in a room and they put the auto cue thing right in front of his face so you couldn't really see his face when he was doing his massive moment in the limelight. And also the sound was terrible. And so the very start of Gordon Brown's Prime Ministership was just a bit.
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Unidentified Political Commentator
Yeah.
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James Landale
Of naff.
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Unidentified Political Commentator
Yeah. And so that's.
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James Landale
I'm just saying that's an example of why you have to get correct. Right.
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Unidentified Political Commentator
And I think that, that what that launch showed, the David Cameron launch, was not only, you know, a professionalism and a slickness in, in operation, it also was the sort of, the start of the sense of, look, they are trying to do something different. They're trying to look different and feel different. That's not just about standing up and saying, you know, giving speeches about, you know, society and things like that, but actually trying to embody that's change. And I think that's the first time we really sort of saw that sense of, okay, they want to try and do something new in the same way. And in the same way that I can remember, you know, that when sort of, you know, Team Blair were doing their stuff in the 90s, you know, they were equally trying to, to embody a sense of change as much as actually, you know, declare it.
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James Landale
And George, we maybe should have mentioned this in the previous episode when we were talking about the history and the build up to all of this period. But the phrase that kept on being uttered about the Tory Party in that era came from Theresa May a few years earlier. And it was, they call us the Nasty Party. And so David Cameron was very consciously trying to sort of deal with that problem.
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George Eustice
Yes. So we had a term that I think David Cameron used to call them the first generation modernizers, which was effectively Francis Maud and Theresa May and people around that. And he had. His analysis was that the reason they had failed is they tried to define themselves against their own party and effectively say, we're the Nasty Party, we need to change. And it was like laying down the gauntlet to the membership. And David Cameron spotted something very different, that you should talk about Conservative values in a fresher, different way. So he reintroduced and put a lot of emphasis on family, on society, charities. The third Sector. He was really trying to broaden things out. And on foreign affairs had this phrase that we can't just be talking about Zimbabwe and Gibraltar all the time. We need to talk about, like, wider foreign affairs. So he was trying to. But. But at the same time, rather than laying down the gauntlet to the party, he was saying, this is our party. It was a shoulder, sort of hand around the shoulder, saying, come with us on this journey because we need to win. We have a responsibility to win so that these Conservative values can come again. And we have to change to win. And we're not changing for the sake of it, we're changing to win so we can do stuff for the country.
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James Landale
So he's trying to. He's trying to fix the party rather than. Yeah. Challenge it.
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George Eustice
Yes. His mission was to persuade the party, the party faithful of the grassroots, the people that everybody said will always vote for a sort of hard right winger, to persuade them that actually we've got a responsibility to connect with the public and we need to change to do that. And. And we can, because we're actually just rediscovering what we've always stood for. It was a very subtle. But he. He pitched it perfectly, I think, just to carry the. The party membership with him in a way that became an unstoppable tide after that, the second speech that he did
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James Landale
in Blackpool, and we'll come on to that a second.
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Unidentified Political Commentator
George is right. And I always remember that when the Tory Party had this sort of psychodrama about its relationship with Margaret Thatcher and, And the sort of, you know, the. The guilt and the betrayal of the defenestration and, you know, she was the sort of the lodestar against which everything was constantly sort of assessed. And Cameron's way of dealing with that and attempting to draw a line under all of that was. Was. Was quite subtle. Instead of saying, you know, giving a speech saying how bad Margaret Thatcher is, he started using this phrase, you know, there is such a thing as society, which was a sort of a gentle rebuke and deconstruction of Thatcher's sort of, you know, focus on. When she said, there is no such thing as society.
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James Landale
There are just family businesses and.
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Unidentified Political Commentator
And it's. It was a sense of sort of individualism. And so he sort of. He just sort of, you know, I mean, obviously we as the lobby wrote it all up as a kind of sort of, you know, sort of reinvention of, you know, the challenge to Thatcherism. But in terms of the tone with party members, I. E. The voters in this particular election, you know, there wasn't any sense of, of, you know, as George says, an overt contrasting oneself with one's party in the past.
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James Landale
Now I sort of misremember this because I feel that then there's this high noon moment at the Conservative Party conference in Blackpool between David Davis and David Cameron. But that is not actually what was happening at that point, is it?
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George Eustice
No. So there were all five candidates were still in there and in fact it was an incredibly sort of liberating and refreshing event because there was no sort of party lines anymore by this stage, you know, Michael Howard had pretty much said look, it's going to be a hustings. And I remember actually all of the speeches being quite, quite powerful in their way. I mean David Davis was perceived and written up as having fallen short of what was required. But even I remember Malcolm Rifkin giving a very good, solid speech. You know, he just didn't have the numbers to go any further in the campaign but he was still at that stage. He had a platform to set out his stool. But it was the moment where David Cameron doing his sort of famous no notes speech, properly speaking from the heart, I think really carried it away.
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James Landale
And we'll talk about David Cameron's speech in a second because it was so pivotal. But James, can you remember why David Davis got such bad reviews for his.
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Unidentified Political Commentator
I thought his speech wasn't as bad as, as pitched. I think it's all about expectations. I think if you're the front runner you have to, you have to sort of, you know, push on. You can't rest on your laurels. And I think that the, the party membership and the audience there just sort of had a sense of oh, okay, maybe we need to look elsewhere. It wasn't that he was a disastrous speech, it was just a sense of do we really want that? Are we sure this is the guy for us? It was just a sort of an element of doubt was placed in the minds of mps and, and the membership because of that speech. Because I mean what I do remember at the time was his team of people. I think they had a curious mixture of, and I'm being polite here, confidence and complacency. I, you know, I'd know, know many of them, I know many of them very well and there was some, there were quite a few bruises. There are a lot of people who'd been in the Whip's office with David Davis during the, the, the really tough Maastricht years and they were, when they
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James Landale
were rebelling Against John Major?
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Unidentified Political Commentator
Yeah, they were a hardcore unit, these people, and, and they, they didn't take that many prisoners. And, and yeah, there was, there was quite a sort of. And so there was just that little sense of, you know, was there a bit of a complacency, a little bit of overconfidence sort of creeping into their campaign at that stage?
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James Landale
And also there's that now infamous picture of David Davis with two young women wearing very tight tops that say DD for me. And you can get the reference. And it just seems even then that must have seemed quite old fashioned.
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George Eustice
It did. I think that that didn't work. That's one of those sort of classic misjudgments. Somebody came up with an idea and it, you know, with hindsight, it obviously was a stupid thing to do.
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Unidentified Political Commentator
The thing I remember about the, those David Davis T shirts was because even in, you know, 2005, it was kind of, you know, because I think it was just sort of girlfriends of some of his team people, you know, he kind of. And it was, I think it was a response to some T shirts that the Cameron supporters had been had. There were some people saying, I'm for D.C. or something like that. And so it was seen as a sort of, you know, the Davis people saw that as a response and a bit of fun. But, but what it, what it did though, is alienated a substantial chunk of Tory women who were a key sort of, you know, swing vote in this, in this election. And I remember because at the time, you know, that there were a lot of really frustrated young Tory women who were struggling to become candidates because this was still an era when a lot of Conservative associations would say, we don't really want a female MP because they'll, they'll be too busy with their family and they won't be able to spend enough time on the constituency, if can imagine, you know, that sort of, you know, it was that sort of era. And so there were a lot of young women who were keen to sort of get ahead in the Tory party and move. So they were offended by this. Then you've got the sort of. There's a, There is a type of fiercely independent Tory woman that you would see in the membership types who, you know, had an acute sense of, you know, don't patronize me.
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James Landale
So we're getting to the famous no notes speech. I mean, George, you explained very well in the previous episode why that's the approach David Cameron took. He was better speaking kind of from the heart, as it were, rather than at a lectern with the sheaf of papers.
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George Eustice
He was just way better at doing a speech from the heart and so it wasn't a sort of. Yeah, it wasn't just off the cuff. He thought about it a lot.
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James Landale
Oh yeah, he wasn't ad libbing.
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George Eustice
He wasn't ad libbing. He had a script but he went into the hall not with a script but with a, a few cards with a few key points on there just to remind him about the point he was trying to make. And by this stage he was very fluent in the arguments he was making. You know it was sort of trip off the tongue quite quickly as it does in these things and you know it was just quite important. I think it just, it meant that he could really connect with people and came across as speaking from the heart and he just, it just connected.
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Unidentified Political Commentator
Real change isn't just about policies or
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Podcast Advertiser/Host
presentation or organization or even dare I
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Unidentified Political Commentator
say it, having a young, vigorous, energetic leader, although
- [19:35]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
come to think of it
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Unidentified Political Commentator
it's not such a bad idea.
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James Landale
And George, it was around this time the issue of whether David Cameron had ever taken drugs started to come up.
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George Eustice
It actually started on the Wednesday of conference. It was a day after his big speech and he had done some terrible timing the interview. It was a hustings run by the observer and it was Andrew Rawnsley doing a sort of in depth interview and he had asked him the, the drugs question and David Cameron had swerved it and basically said you're entitled to a private past. And we had discussed how you'd handle this question and David Cameron is another example where I think his instincts were just absolutely right on this.
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James Landale
He,
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George Eustice
he took the view that politics, the, the conventional wisdom is oh you should get it all out there, do a confessional interview, say that you took drugs, talk about it, say that it was wrong, etc he took the view that that's wrong, that that actually ends up belittling politics and that journalists are entitled to ask questions like that if they want but they're not entitled to an answer. And he was very hard about this, that actually you're entitled to a private past before you came into politics. And so, and I completely agreed with him because I also felt that politicians were often buffeted about by personal questions of this sort and it just, it didn't send the right signals and he, he mastered this ability of just saying you're entitled to a private pass. And the TR public believe that as well. They think that some journalist questions are too intrusive and, and not right.
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Unidentified Political Commentator
If you think about it. When you look back at the sort of retrospectives of David Cameron's leadership of the Conservative Party and as Prime Minister, you know, the fact that he may or may not have taken drugs at university is probably pretty low down. The kind of things that one can say and critique about David Cameron.
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George Eustice
He did manage to turn it in, I think, to his advantage. It's some days after that he appeared on Question Time on the panel. This one from Terry Richardson, please. Do the public have a right to
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James Landale
know about past indiscretions of people who
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George Eustice
intend to represent the country as a whole? David Cameron?
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Unidentified Political Commentator
What can they be thinking of?
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George Eustice
I think that you do have a right to, to a private life before you go into politics.
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Podcast Advertiser/Host
I didn't spend.
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George Eustice
And I remember the, the, the sort of late Anne Leslie, I think it was a Daily Mail columnist at the time, literally berating him and saying, you have to tell this story. You know, the. And she literally said, I think the dogs of war in the, in the press will not rest until you've told the story. And he just doubled down on and said that he wasn't going to. And you have said that you don't want this McCarthyite witch hunting. You're going to get it anyway because by not saying what you did, people assume that you were having sort of
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Unidentified Political Commentator
Kate Moss type orgies with cocaine and
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George Eustice
all the rest of it.
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James Landale
And they will go on digging if
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George Eustice
you say, yeah, I did, I was stupid, then forget it. And various Tories did at one stage say, yeah, I smoked the odd spliff. Nobody remembers who they were now. It doesn't matter. You've had advice from the Daily Mail.
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Unidentified Political Commentator
I get lots of advice, advice from the Daily Mail and I don't accept all of it.
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George Eustice
People actually respected a politician who showed metal when under fire and respected their ability to protect a private pass they might have.
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James Landale
And in terms of other things that are going on, you've alluded to George Osborne's role. Tell us some more about. About how George Osborne was. Was how that partnership was working at that point.
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George Eustice
George was the campaign manager. It's obviously, yeah, absolutely crucial. So whereas I suppose I did my bit with the lobby. You had Kate Fall who looked after his diary and a lot of the relations with the, the MPs. It was a very good MP called Andrew Robothan who used to do the numbers. Steve Hilton bought the. The sort of creative flair and what you had with George Osborne was the, the political hard headedness.
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James Landale
And James, a lot of those people became known as the Notting Hill Set this whole cliche about David Cameron's group of, group of colleagues and friends and I remember the first time I was sent to David Cameron's house to do one of those famous clips where he walked off at the end. I got there, I was like, this isn't even then Notting Hill, he doesn't even live there. Yeah, this is all a mess.
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Unidentified Political Commentator
But it was, it was. The whole point about David Cameron's operation was that, you know, as George is sort of, you know, portrayed, it was a lot of close friends and colleagues. It was very tight team and that has a strength which is it. It means, you know, you've got a good tight team that's, you know, focused, you know, disciplined. Everybody knows its role. But, but, and this is a criticism that has been leveled against him, you know, throughout it is that he ended up with too many mates in his operation and it was. Yeah, and, and that, and that actually, therefore, sometimes throughout his, you know, subsequent leadership and Prime Ministership, there weren't enough people outside saying I think that might not be the most sensible thing to do. There were too many people there sort of saying yes, rather not enough people saying no.
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James Landale
And then we get to the denouement. How did the final stages of the contest play out?
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George Eustice
Well, it went through as we said at the beginning, it was a marathon campaign this. So you had those final voting rounds on 18 October and the 1st thing that happened is although, as James said earlier, David Davis topped the poll, Ken Clark finished last. And so David Davis's message was I've still topped the poll but that wasn't obviously going to last because nearly all of Ken Clark supporters then came behind David Cameron and at that point we had unstoppable momentum and in the, in the next round, basically David Cameron had nearly half of the Conservative mps. Now there was a moment when David Davis's campaign that were really bruised by this point, they be absolutely hammered For a number of weeks they did contemplate chucking the towel in and just allowing it to be a, a coronation of David Cameron, which was really quite an extraordinary turnaround when you think that not much more than six weeks earlier they've been talk of it should it be a coronation for David Davis. But in the end I think it was a view that the contest should go ahead and that actually the public should do it. And to be fair, I think David Davis realized by that point that he was probably going to struggle to, to win, but that actually the contest should still go ahead because it would be all the Stronger if, if the party membership did crown David Cameron at the end. And I think that was quite a decent thing really for David Davis to do. I mean, you know, he probably hoped he might have an outside chance as well.
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James Landale
And here is the moment when the final result was announced.
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George Eustice
I can now announce the result of the election for the leadership of the Conservative Party. The number of valid votes cast was 198,844. They voted for David Davis. 64,398. They voted for David Cameron. 134,446.
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James Landale
And then, James, I mean, I wouldn't get you to then sum up the next five years of political history, but there was a lot, there was a lot of change in the air in that year or two.
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Unidentified Political Commentator
I mean, Cameron, I always, I always remember Cameron coming in quite soon at PMQS and that famous line that he said to Blair, you know, sort of, I don't want to talk about, you know, I want to talk about the future. You know, sort of you were the future once. And it was just those little moments that's kind of okay, yeah, sort of. You know, and then, you know, we had the hugger husky moments where so David Cameron went to the sort of, the frozen wastes to sort of.
- [27:06]
James Landale
So he cared about the environment and
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Unidentified Political Commentator
there was hug a hoodie when.
- [27:10]
James Landale
But she never actually said but.
- [27:13]
Unidentified Political Commentator
And so there was all of that. So there was the whole sort of modernizing, you know, I remember, you know, lots of young Tories rushing off to Rwanda, you know, to volunteer. To volunteer as part of the kind of, sort of, to show that the Conservatives were interested in international development. So there was that, that sort of agenda. But also obviously you had the, the psychodrama of the labor leadership playing out during those years and the handover from, from Blair to Brown. And that famous moment, which was a sort of big moment for the sort of early Cameron era was of, of whether or not Gordon Brown would hold a general election, early general election or not. And there was a, quite a big decision, yeah, big decision by the Conservatives about whether or not, you know, to challenge him to do that and force. And, and, and then when Brown chose not to do that, that obviously, you know, damaged Brent. So there was, there was a lot, yeah, there was a lot of change and a lot of, you know, a lot going on.
- [28:14]
James Landale
And George, a really difficult question for you to end on, so I'll give you some time to think about this. Is there a particular thing from that era, from that leadership contest that really helps to Explain something about David Cameron, the Prime Minister that we all saw much later on.
- [28:28]
George Eustice
What I took away during those months that I worked with him is this is somebody who had good judgment, who had the right temperament to be a good Prime Minister and could be cautious and circumspect at times, but also had moments when he showed real metal, particularly if cornered. He'd be very stubborn and show a lot of metal. And I thought all that was, you know, all of that was, you know, all of that was positive. The criticism there used to be of him, which I think had some, some truth in it is, you know, there was always this, this narrative that he needed an essay crisis to be able to perform and that, you know, it's a bit unfair because all leaders are run ragged all the time, but there was a sense that when his backup was against the wall and he really needed it, he would step up and be able to do it. But in between, you know, he wouldn't be quite as, as, you know, wouldn't push it quite as hard. He would, he was a man for the big moments.
- [29:21]
Unidentified Political Commentator
I think what we saw in that election, and which we shouldn't, we shouldn't underestimate the importance of this election in terms of the Conservative Party finally sort of rediscovering its appetite for power after such a, a sort of long time of talking to itself, obsessing by about Manusiah and, and just being less relevant in the political space. So, you know, this, the, this leadership election began that process of renewal and restored the Conservative Party eventually to power for some time. And I think what we saw in David Cameron was, was all the strengths and weaknesses that we would subsequently see as Prime Prime Minister. In other words, you know, the smoothness, the, the fluency, the charm, the ability to bring people together, form coalitions literally in his. And if, and that shouldn't be underestimated as a political skill. I think in our current generation of politicians they've forgotten that politics is about sitting in a room and persuading somebody else that you've got the right idea for this particular thing and then expanding that to the, to the room, to the party, to the country, etc. And Cameron was a good argue, a persuader. He remind the reason. I mean, you know, he always had that criticism that he was sort of another version of Blair. But what. One thing that he did share in common with Blair is that he was fascinated by how you persuade people to do things. And you know there's a sort of, there's a sort of, there's a. There's an art of political seduction. I think Cameron was interested in that and I think he wanted. And he was. She showed that he was very good at doing that. But at the same time, we also saw, you know, the weakness that, you know, a little bit too much charm, a little bit of perhaps, you know, sort of the lack of substance occasionally, the sense that actually, where did he want to end up? Because some of the decisions that he subsequently took, the, the overconfidence slightly outweighed the, the strategic sort of thing. And I think ultimately, you know, you know, he took risks. You know, he, he, he, he threw some dice and won on the Scotland referendum. He made the same decision on Brexit and failed. And I think that, you know, we could see, maybe with hindsight, some of those early signs, characteristic signs from this election in 2005.
- [31:44]
James Landale
I think my takeaway from this conversation with the two of you, which has been excellent and fascinating, is just that the Cameron that won the leadership wasn't necessarily a different person from who the Prime Minister was, but the switch from Sunny Uplands and Let Sunshine Win the Day to, oh, Austerity because of the global financial crisis, it's just, it's like the difference between night and day, just. And obviously I lived through it in real time, so you don't necessarily appreciate these things, but just hearing it like this just made me realize totally different. So what he ended up doing as Prime Minister is really quite different from what he offered in that leadership contest.
- [32:21]
George Eustice
Yes, and I remember the moment when he was leader, it was a big decision when they took a decision to come off Labour spending plans because they could see that post the financial crisis, actually, we were going to need to come off those and it was going to be a different story. And if you look at those early speeches he did in 2005, it was a lot of it about quality of life. It's not all about money. People want a better quality of life and so on. And there were speeches pitched around that because, you know, things were good financially, really. We've been through 20 years of relatively sort of benign economic circumstances, and I think nobody really could foresee what was coming, but it was, you know, it was then quite a challenge because, you know, all of the things that he said on family and things like, you know, a transferable tax allowance for, you know, married couples and so on, you know, all of those things were watered down and never really had the money to see them through a story.
- [33:14]
James Landale
To be continued. George, thank you very much.
- [33:16]
George Eustice
Thank you.
- [33:17]
James Landale
And James, thanks to you too.
- [33:18]
George Eustice
Thanks a lot.
- [33:19]
James Landale
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- [34:57]
James Landale
And that's all for this episode of Old Newscast. The next in our box set of big electoral moments in British political history will come your way next weekend and it will be the behind the scenes history of the 2010 election. And in the meantime, there'll be a classic episode of Newscast coming your way very soon. Not with me cause I've got a day off, but it'll still be excellent. See you soon. Bye bye.
- [35:20]
George Eustice
Newscast Newscast from the BBC. Well, thank you for making it to
- [35:23]
Unidentified Political Commentator
the end of another newscast. You clearly ooze stamina. Can I gently encourage you to subscribe to us on BBC Sounds? And then without having to do anything else, our meandering chat will miraculously make its way to your phone.