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of concern about the nation’s mounting unemployment figures. But his associates recall that his real passion was reserved for railing against the iniquities of the ‘Common Market’. Brussels, it seems, has been a Cameron target from the moment he started taking politics seriously. ‘It wasn’t brilliantly original but it was generally fairly soundly argued,’ says one who knew him well at the time.

      Trade unions were another favoured mark. His appearance as a writer in the Chronicle, the school magazine, is limited to a solid but unremarkable review of a talk by former Labour minister Eric Heffer.

      Eric Heffer, chairman of the Labour Party, gave us an interesting and informative talk about the relationship between the trade union movement and the Labour party. He emphasised the historical connection between the two and the basic principle of putting working class men into the house of Commons and then went on to explain that Tory trade union legislation, past and present, was tantamount to class legislation. Many of the questions were directly in response to what he had spoken about, but others ranged into the areas of Labour party leadership, Grenada [the tiny Commonwealth country recently invaded by the US] and the abolition of public schools. In an effective analogy, Mr Heffer then compared the trade union movement to a guards regiment, saying that if attacked they would ‘go down fighting with their backs to the wall’. It was a fascinating if slightly depressing forecast.

      Tony Benn was another unlikely stimulus. Cameron has said that reading Benn’s book Arguments for Democracy helped pique his interest in politics. ‘Lots of it I disagree with, but I loved reading it. I like being stimulated by things I disagree with, almost rather than reading something and saying: “Yes, that is my creed.”’

      But – in a pattern to be repeated at university – Cameron preferred to keep at one remove from the junior political practitioners. He attended the Political Society, which invited distinguished speakers from outside to address it. In his time Lords Home and Carrington, Len Murray, William Waldegrave, Frank Field and Grey Gowrie came to speak. But he was never on its committee (which would have offered the chance to meet and dine with the speakers), unlike, say, Boris Johnson, a year his senior and later to become a Tory MP and mayor of London. ‘It just wasn’t his style,’ says John Clark. ‘He didn’t draw attention to himself. He wasn’t effusive or loud. He certainly didn’t dominate in private business. You’d have to remind me of the others from that tutorial, although there was something about him that made him very memorable.’

      But there was something more. There was an episode in private business when the Tutor asked each boy to put in words what they thought of other members of the group. Whether this was a test of diplomacy, of honesty or of human perceptiveness is unimportant. It was to reveal something not readily apparent in David Cameron, who was generally regarded as an affable, emollient, easy-going character. ‘I expected people to dance around the edge,’ says the Tutor in question, Tim Young. But the participants were brought up short when one of their number, John Crossley, perhaps displaying the candour of his Yorkshire heritage, pointed across the room at David Cameron and said, ‘You are tough as nails, you are, and no one realises it.’ The group fell silent. Tim Young recalls how struck he was by Crossley’s comment: ‘We didn’t do much in the session after that, everyone was so startled by what had been said.’ But, according to Young, Crossley – who died in a skiing accident some years later – was right. ‘I do remember him being very pleasant, yes, but there was also a steely determination which has been revealed since. I think he has quite a core to him, and it was a side of David that I hadn’t noticed.’

      Others were coming to see the drive, though. Among them was Ferdie Mount, then working for Mrs Thatcher in Downing Street. Mount had received a call from his cousin Mary (Cameron’s mother), asking if David could come to his office to do an interview for the school magazine. Mount explained that he was tremendously busy and in any event tied by the Official Secrets Act but that he would think about it. This was never likely to fob off the young Cameron, who rang Mount’s office, fixed an appointment and simply turned up. He looked, says Mount, ‘pink and perky’ (he didn’t shave daily till after he left Eton), and ‘abounding in self-confidence’. ‘He instantly put me at my ease and his genial chutzpah dissolved my ill-humour in a trice. It would not have taken extra-sensory powers to see that he would go far, though not perhaps with the miraculous speed that he did.’ Cameron worked extremely hard and thrived in the freedom that being a specialist allowed. John Clark says, ‘I did rate him very highly. I knew he was an ambitious, bright, intellectually curious guy. He was really quite sharp, able to pick up ideas quickly, to communicate them well.’ Another Old Etonian friend, although not of Cameron’s vintage, ascribes his emotional toughness to his schooling. Rupert Dilnott-Cooper, who was to work with him at Carlton Television, said: ‘I think that – albeit as a generalisation and I am not suggesting it applies to David – some Etonians can be emotionally “distant” sometimes about things. I think there can be a degree of dispassionate ruthlessness that comes down to saying, “Thanks very much. Next?” And whether that’s being at a boys’ boarding school at the age of thirteen, I don’t know. I have no idea if David is like that, but, in any event, I’m confident that he would be capable of being as ruthless as he needs to be.’

      In an early newspaper profile, ‘a lifelong Conservative who has known Cameron since Eton’ said: ‘I don’t like David. He’s hugely arrogant. But everyone from my background is so enthralled about the idea of having a prime minister from among their ranks that to say anything against him would be seen as disloyal.’ Another school contemporary who finds the Cameron charm resistible says he has always had a calculating talent for impressing those who matter (‘If you weren’t socially interesting, one of the in-crowd, he would be very dismissive’), while yet another says, ‘He always struck me as a bit of a greaser.’ Cameron is also blessed with what some see as a very Etonian sense of entitlement, a feeling that there’s no reason he shouldn’t be a beneficiary of whatever might be in the offing.

      Both facets of his character are evident in his choice of ‘Option’, an unexamined subject, like a hobby, often of a cultural or possibly professional nature. Cameron’s cultural tastes, his exasperated friends will confirm, have never been highbrow. Yet he chose ‘The Rise of the English Novel’, taught by the headmaster. For most Etonians the prospect of being taught by ‘the Head Man’, even one as popular and respected as Eric Anderson, would fill them with dread. The majority would prefer to keep their head down. That Cameron should choose to be taught by Anderson, just three months after nearly being expelled for taking drugs, says a good deal for his insouciance. This was not a boy to shrivel away into the corner.

      People tend to assume that Cameron must have been in Pop, the (then) self-electing society of prefects, chosen for their popularity and illustriousness. He was, after all, well liked, he was good at tennis and he was head of house. Indeed, some contemporaries now have trouble believing that he wasn’t in Pop, so well does he fit the bill. Maybe his comparatively low-profile house worked against him, in that it can help a boy to get into Pop if another boy in his house can promote his cause. Yet notwithstanding the house’s middling ranking, it managed to get no fewer than three boys in Cameron’s year into Pop, James Learmond, Roland Watson and Pete Davis. Conceivably, it was thought that there were already too many boys from JF in Pop. One member speculates – because he cannot remember – that Cameron might have been ‘slightly too polished for his own good. There might have been a feeling that he was socially a bit pleased with himself.’

      John Clark is unsurprised at Cameron not getting into Pop. ‘He wasn’t a high-profile character. He wasn’t enough of a games player. He wasn’t good at the right things.’ Fred de Falbe, who was in Pop, agrees: ‘He was popular in a low-key sort of way, and he might have been a candidate at one stage, but, unlike a lot of us, he just knuckled down and got on with his work.’ Monty Erskine, who was in several of the same classes, says Cameron ‘wasn’t a flash git, which is what usually gets you into Pop’.

      He might have made a good member of Pop, though. When he replaced his friend Roland Watson as Captain of his

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