Will David Cameron be our last Neoliberal Prime Minister?

By Will Barber Taylor

And so, the time comes when any leader, no matter how great they are, how much they have achieved, how large their mandate must face the greatest challenge they are ever likely to face — the post premiership press junket.

I am, of course, only half joking; yet it can often be a difficult experience for any Prime Minister or President to reappraise their time in office when they have left, and the passage of time sets their time in office in stone. There isn’t much they can do about it then — just try and defend it as best they can.

David Cameron currently find himself in such a situation and regardless of what you think of him, it is worth hearing what he has to say. A great deal of what he offers involves the word “sorry” and he certainly seems contrite. Well, as contrite as a man flogging his book can be.

Though Cameron is sorry for the referendum’s result he is unrelenting in his belief that he can’t really be sorry for it happening in the first place; it was inevitable. So too was austerity — it had to happen, and, in fact, he wishes that he had cut more and cut it faster.

It is, in this “well it wasn’t entirely bad” half heartedness that David Cameron attempts to maintain that he did good as Prime Minister. And it is perhaps also by resurfacing that he is doing the most damage to his legacy; at a time when chaos over Brexit is prevalent, is it really wise for the person who initiated it to come and stake out his legacy — a legacy which may be defined as him being our last Neoliberal Prime Minister.

Cameron’s belief in living within “our means” whilst also attempting to pursue progressive politics that utilised bills through Parliament alongside wider social incentives is a key part of his political ideology and legacy. Some of them worked better than others; whilst the 2011 Same Sex Marriage Act is rightly lauded, who can realistically say “The Big Society” worked, particularly given its eventual cost to the taxpayer?

It is this that, at its core is the reason, beyond Brexit that Cameron may be our last ideologically neoliberal Prime Minister. Cameron’s brand of politics, that at one time attempted to copy elements of Blairism prior to the 2008 Financial Crisis turned towards a fine balancing act between emphasis on economic security and progressive measures which never entirely worked out but for most of his premiership appeared to — it is for this reason that Cameron was able to win in 2015 and lose in 2016.

The political emphasis he placed on the balancing act’s ability to satisfy the British people by promising slow but steady movement towards a more progressive and equal society through budget cuts was blown apart by the bold and bombastic message of the Leave campaign; that really, those sunny uplands could be reached not by following Cameron’s lead but by leaving the European Union.

It is in this post referendum vote landscape that we see Cameron’s vision shattered and both Labour and Conservative Parties increasingly moving in opposite directions. The Labour Party had, prior to the vote, already been moving towards the left but the result of the referendum simply accelerated the pace; the EU had been seen as an example of capitalism entrapping Britain from being able to enact full socialism. Cameron’s aim was always to beat Labour but the leadership’s ambivalence to the Referendum ensured he lost.

Similarly, Cameron’s own party has diverged from his legacy by repudiating the austerity he thought was necessary and instead taking on many of the ideas and talking points one would associate more with the Labour Party than Cameron’s neo liberal Conservatives, seemingly forcing the party into a direction that disavows Cameron’s belief in fiscally sensible “pragmatic” Conservatism.

So, will David Cameron be our last Neoliberal Conservative Prime Minister? For the time being, certainly. Both the two most likely contenders for the title of Prime Minister, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn are in their own way starkly different to the neoliberalism of the Cameron years and as our country continues to be divided and shift between different flavours of populism, it is likely that Cameron’s greatest legacy will be to have killed off his own brand of politics, at least for the next decade.