Britain's New Prime Minister - An Excerpt

New PM Cameron: A Rise From Abject Privilege - An Excerpt
By Theunis Bates

LONDON (May 7) -- If Barack Obama's 2008 presidential success was a tale of triumph over adversity, then David Cameron's victory is one of triumph over prosperity. Because in order to win over the British public -- 36 percent of whom voted for his center-right Conservative Party on Thursday -- the country's new prime minister has had to play down his highly privileged background.

Cameron is everything a leader of modern, egalitarian Britain -- where everyone aspires to be middle class -- should not be: a blue-blooded member of the elite. Born to a stockbroker father and an aristocratic mother, Cameron was educated at Eton College, one of the world's most expensive and exclusive private schools, which has produced 18 past prime ministers. He then went on to study at Oxford, where he joined the infamous Bullingdon Club, the university's own port-guzzling, hell-raising version of Yale's Skull and Bones secret society. (Other past members include Boris Johnson, now the floppy-haired mayor of London.)

However, Cameron knows the importance of image -- he worked as a PR man at a TV company for seven years -- and recognizes that most Brits don't want to be governed by an upper-class toff. So since winning the leadership of the Conservative Party in late 2005, he has tried to make himself seem a little more, well, common. He has claimed that his wife and family don't call him David, but rather use the more down-to-earth "Dave." Cameron's children also attend a non-fee-paying London school, something many of his old Eton classmates would almost certainly call "ghastly."

In the build-up to the May 6 election, his opponents in Gordon Brown's center-left Labour Party -- which served 13 years in power -- attempted to portray Cameron as an aristocratic throwback, someone only interested in helping out his wealthy chums. Brown condemned Cameron's plans to raise the inheritance tax threshold to $1.5 million, which he said would only benefit 3,000 of the Tories' "old friends." At the same time, Labour warned, Cameron would shrink tax breaks and benefits for ordinary British families.

However, Cameron says he is anything but an old-school Tory. Instead he calls himself a "modern, compassionate Conservative." Under his leadership, the Tories have largely shaken off their reputation as the "nasty party," which they acquired during the high-unemployment Margaret Thatcher years, and which condemned them to the opposition benches for more than a decade. Cameron has forced his party to support gay rights and expelled members who believe homosexuals should be discriminated against. He has also spoken out in defense of the minimum wage, green energy and Britain's sometimes troubled but much-loved National Health Service, which more extreme Conservatives dream of dismantling.

Cameron's commitment to the National Health Service is a result of his own family's tragedy. Ivan, his first child with wife Samantha, was born with cerebral palsy and a severe form of epilepsy, conditions requiring around-the-clock care. After Ivan died early last year at the age of 6, the Tory leader spoke of his admiration for the NHS nurses and doctors who "helped every day since he was born." Their kindness and unflinching support, say friends, made Cameron a passionate defender of Britain's health care system.

But Cameron hasn't simply painted a smiley face on the Conservatives. In recent months, as the true scale of Britain's economic crisis has become clear -- the national deficit is at its highest level since World War II -- Cameron has given more hard-line speeches. While he once promised to "share the proceeds of growth" during his early years as Tory leader, he now talks of curtailing immigration, slashing government expenditure and forcing people off benefits and back in to work.

Prime Minister Cameron has an unenviable job ahead of him: He must balance the country's books, without forcing too much hardship on ordinary Brits. And he must do all of this while working together with the center-left Liberal Democrats. If he fails, the Conservatives could once again be dubbed the nasty party, and come the next election in 2015 at the latest, be doomed to another long stretch in opposition.