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Name: For the Record
Rating: 4.4 (56 reviews)
Author: David Cameron

David Cameron

An honest account from a prime minister who truly altered his country’s course

4.4 (56 ratings)

31 mins

Topics

UK Politics

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For the Record
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What’s in it for me? Hear an honest account from a prime minister who truly altered his country’s course.

David Cameron resigned as the Prime Minister in 2016, but the legacy of this time in office will last for generations. Cameron will almost certainly be remembered as the prime minister who introduced a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, campaigned for his country to remain in the union – and lost.

There’s much more to Cameron than just Brexit, of course. His stereotypically upper-middle-class background marks him out as a typical British Conservative, but Cameron was determined to be a different, compassionate, reforming Conservative politician. Having modernized his party and its policies, he was rewarded with two successive general election wins and six years as prime minister.

But despite such achievements, it’s Cameron’s decision to call the Brexit referendum, and Britain’s subsequent decision to leave that history will remember.

In this honest, behind-the-scenes account of David Cameron’s personal life, career in politics, and time in office, these blinks explain why he took the decisions he did. They shed light on the realities of life as prime minister, recounts some of the challenges and frustrations Cameron faced in the referendum campaign, and share his views on why the Brexit battle was – from his perspective – lost.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

how smoking cannabis at Eton helped put Cameron on the road to success;
what it’s like to spend a weekend with the Queen; and
why Cameron still believes that hosting the Brexit referendum was right.

David Cameron enjoyed an old-fashioned upbringing.

Even as a young boy, David Cameron knew he was privileged.

His upbringing and education were, by his own admission, something of an English upper-middle-class cliché. His parents had inherited money. After living briefly in Kensington, a well-to-do neighborhood in London, the family moved to a pleasant village called Peasemore, not far from the capital. Cameron’s parents were warm and loving, but nonetheless, he was sent off to boarding school at the age of seven.

The boarding school in question, Heatherdown, was tiny and exclusive. Prince Edward was a pupil there. Cameron’s elder brother, Alex, even became friends with the prince and visited him at Windsor Castle.

The school was rather antiquated. When it was time for baths, Cameron and his fellow pupils would line up, naked, in front of a row of Victorian metal tubs. They had to wait until they heard the headmaster blow his whistle before they were permitted to climb in. The boys then bathed, enveloped in foul-smelling smoke emanating from the headmaster’s ever-present pipe.

After Heatherdown, he – like his father and grandfather before him – attended England’s most famous school, Eton College. And there, for a time, he felt rather mediocre. Uninspired by work, he fell in with the wrong crowd. Before he knew it, he was regularly sneaking out with friends to smoke cannabis. Eton is not a normal school, and sneaking out was far from normal also: it involved renting a rowboat and rowing out to an island in the river Thames, where he and friends would roll a joint and get high.

This habit didn’t last long. Rounded up and interrogated by the headmaster during a school-wide crackdown on drug users, Cameron thought he would be expelled, as several of his friends were.

He got away with a lesser punishment – a fine and the enforced, pointless transcription of one of Virgil’s Georgics poems in Latin. Cameron was incredibly relieved and determined to make more of an effort in life.

It was a huge turning point. From then on, Cameron was a student transformed. Successful results at Eton led to a Politics, Philosophy, and Economics degree at Oxford. Afterward, in 1988, he found work in the Conservative Party’s research department.

Rising through the ranks, Cameron became an adviser to the then-chancellor of the exchequer, Norman Lamont. And while he left Westminster for a brief spell in business, his desire to be in politics never went away. Elected Conservative member of Parliament (MP) for the Oxfordshire constituency of Witney in 2001, he became leader of his party just four years later, in 2005.

As leader of the Conservative Party, Cameron worked to modernize a rather out-of-touch institution.

A fresh-faced and young Conservative leader, David Cameron took over a party that had not just been hopelessly out of power for almost a decade. It was, in his opinion, also hopelessly out of touch with modern Britain.

The party had consistently opposed positive social reforms, like reducing the pay gap between men and women. It was also totally unrepresentative of a modern, diverse Britain: At the 2005 election, only 17 of the 198 Conservative MPs were women. The Conservative Party was so white and male that when Cameron appointed his team of spokespeople his desire to build a diverse team was curtailed. In the end, his initial team contained more people named David than women.

Cameron wasn’t just a politician – he’s also a proud family man.

For the most part, Cameron’s family were happy living at 10 Downing Street. The famous residence of the British prime minister is half offices, half family home. But for his children, there was no real distinction between the two.

Once, Cameron recalled seeing a senior military adviser arriving through the front door for a meeting. In full dress uniform, bedecked in his medals, he might have been an intimidating sight. But not for the young Florence Cameron. Sitting on the hallway floor, Florence simply demanded to know what he was doing in her house.

Cameron found the Queen to be a great support and the Royal Family accommodating hosts.

Cameron’s first encounter with royalty came during his school years and was one to forget. As a schoolboy at Heatherdown, he read a Bible lesson at a carol service as the Queen sat in the front row. Unfortunately, he forgot the crucial "Thanks be to God" that comes at the end. Realizing this, as he stepped from the lectern, he panicked and let out an audible "oh shit!”

Thankfully the Queen forgot about this incident because Cameron would, as is traditional for the British prime minister, meet with her on a weekly basis while in office.

At the 2015 general election, Cameron learned from his earlier mistakes and focused on message discipline.

In politics, clarity is important.

Yet in 2010, the Conservatives campaigned on a confusing set of slogans about everything from budget deficit reduction to volunteering. As election campaigns go, it wasn’t a classic. As a result, the Conservatives failed to win a majority and had to govern in coalition for five years.

Cameron promised a Brexit referendum, reflecting long-standing unease about Britain’s membership in the EU.

On Wednesday, January 23, 2013, David Cameron made a momentous pledge. There was growing dissatisfaction with Britain’s membership of the European Union. Many felt that Britain wasn’t getting enough from its relationship with the EU. Cameron promised to sort this out. First, he would renegotiate the terms of Britain's membership, then he would call a referendum and put Britain’s position in the EU up for a vote. It was a momentous decision.

Cameron believed then, and still does today, that Brexit would be a mistake. So why did he call a referendum?

Immigration was a huge political issue and a key focus of Cameron’s renegotiation attempts.

While Cameron’s renegotiation of Britain’s relationship with the EU focused on a variety of areas, one was far more politically significant, and difficult, than the others: Immigration.

Under EU laws, all member state citizens have the right to move to and work, live, and stay in other member states. This led to popular concerns in Britain, which in Cameron’s view were entirely legitimate, and which turned out to be major drivers of support for Brexit.

Cameron fought hard to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the EU and believed that the deal was a good one.

Between May 2015 and February 2016, Cameron spent much of his life on planes, shuttling around European capitals and attending summits. Once, in a span of 48 hours, he ate lunch in Rotterdam, dined in Paris, had breakfast in Warsaw, and lunched again in Berlin.

All this travel was an attempt to win EU support for a package of measures that, Cameron argued, would enshrine a “special status” for Britain: still a part of the EU but with greater freedom than before.

During the referendum campaign, the Remain campaign came up against the unashamed populism of Leave.

Standing in front of a Typhoon fighter jet at a factory in northern England in early 2016, Cameron argued passionately that EU membership both allowed cooperation in security matters and made British people’s holidays cheaper. This, for him, was what UK membership in the EU was all about, the reason why Britain was “stronger, safer and better off in Europe.” But in pushing this line, Cameron and the Remain campaign found themselves up against the forces of populism in a “post-truth” world.

For example, the Leave campaign was claiming that freedom of movement would lead to five million extra people coming to Britain by 2030. The focus of its incendiary messaging was Turkey, and it published posters stating that Turkey and its population of 76 million were joining the EU. This message implied that mass Turkish immigration to the United Kingdom would soon follow. It was an outrageous distortion of the truth.

For Cameron, a Leave victory also meant leaving 10 Downing Street.

On referendum night, Cameron and his wife gathered with colleagues at 10 Downing Street to watch the results come in. They were feeling confident. But at midnight, a tighter-than-expected result in Newcastle caused some nerves. Twenty minutes later, the northern city of Sunderland announced a Leave result with a huge margin. At 2 a.m., Cameron’s 12-year-old daughter Nancy called it: "Dad," she said, "we’re losing." By 2.30 a.m., Cameron himself knew it was over.

And for Cameron, losing meant not just huge consequences for Britain, but also that he would have to leave his job.

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What is For the Record about?

In For the Record (2019), David Cameron gives a behind-the-scenes account of his life, career, and time as prime minister. He opens up about his upper-class upbringing, his school life, and his family. He describes how he tried to push the Conservative Party toward a more modern outlook on the world and reflects on the decisions that led to Britain’s vote to leave the European Union.

Best quote from For the Record

I made the pledge because I genuinely thought it was the right thing for Britain.

—David Cameron

Who should read For the Record?

Political animals
Anyone who wants to understand why Brexit happened
Modern Conservatives

About the Author

David Cameron grew up in Berkshire, England, and was educated at Eton College and Oxford University. He was elected as Conservative member of Parliament for Witney in 2001, became party leader in 2005, and served as prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland between 2010 and 2016. Whatever else he might have achieved in power, he may go down in history as the leader who ushered in Brexit – Britain’s departure from the European Union.

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Politics Biography & Memoir

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