During
my now celebrated interviews with John Major, I asked him, "When did the
iron enter into your soul?" The answer is in the biography I wrote. But I
now want to ask that question of David Cameron: and I'm going to second guess
the answer. The rather flabby Mr Please All PM of recent years has suddenly
developed grit and vim of the sort that only comes after the iron has entered
into the soul. It happened while he agonised over the outcome of this Scots
vote. Did it matter that much to the English? No, it was just an exercise
somewhere else. Not quite a far away people of whom we know nothing, these
purveyors of salmon and scotch, proprietors of North Sea oil, seemed to turn
Cameron from polite yes man into a sudden superman.
If he
hears Boris barking at his heels or senses worse to come at the in/out EU
referendum, or thinks he's found a way of leaving Nigel Farage without a foot
to stand on, and Ed Milliband with 40 fewer MP's he has now risen from his
couch and is beginning to look like a leader rather than a follower of pubic
opinion.
He'll
bomb Asil and try to win a Tory coalition on English Rule and maybe he'll win
the next General Election. I still doubt he'll remain as leader after that,
unless he shows real determination to lead the country out of the EU. And he
may still need to be pushed hard to do that. Meantime, I have been watching and
waiting anxiously for this decent and chronically indecisive man who waits to
see what people think before he leads them forward, to discover that leadership
is more than managing the results of market research.
Has he
found the way? I think so. I thought he found a way in 2010 when he came to an
agreement with Nick Clegg after a ten day wrangle that ended in the Coalition.
This was artistry of the possible at work, I thought, as I watched from my
eerie above the Louvre and was pleased with them both.
Cameron
is a negotiator and a diplomat but real leadership needs a rougher gift of
uncompromising conviction in one's own rightness and the firm determination to
win the day.
Seeing
a nation poised on the edge of calamity with constitutional reform as the
unavoidable agenda for the next few years, Cameron may have tempered steel out
of that iron newly in the soul. At last the flab has become firm muscle. On
your horse, boy! History may yet award you the prize. Not only Britain, but
Europe, needs to be led out of a floundering mess of indecision, excess
government and false notions of union. The poor economic performance of the EU
and its member states is due to a system of government and economic management
that is too cumbersome to function effectively. Sweeping reform is needed to
simplify government to allow real growth through fresh enterprise; and where
better to start than at home, from the ground up. Constitutional reform is the
way to release the forces of economic dynamism that are now trapped among
layers of bureaucracy. But the reforms must be good ones. There is no point in
adding another layer of government to soak up more taxes and generate busybody
laws. The aim should be to reduce
not increase government and to ensure its relevance to present day patterns of
economic activity.
The
common good is to be found in new political structures that reflect a true
sense of participation in regional and national life, in the roots that choose
their expression in a sense of identity with origins and traditions, no less
the tradition of Parliamentary democracy. As George found his dragon, David may
have found his Goliath, while Cameron is discovering his destiny.
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