did not mix socially at Brasenose, or that he was an unthinking member of the ‘socialite’ set. He picked his way carefully through the various camps, siding with the humorous against the earnest, but all the while keeping his eye on the goal he had set himself. One friend at the time remarked that Cameron had been motivated to get into Oxford partly to trump his elder brother. In truth, the pair had always got on well and – says someone who knows them both extremely well – were genuinely pleased at one another’s success. Whatever the spur, there was no doubt of Cameron’s next ambition: to get a first-class degree.
Some Etonians feel that after five years in charmed surroundings, they are ready for a dose of something a bit different. David Cameron was not one of these. At Eton, a boy’s timetable is finely calibrated to pack as much as possible into a day. On leaving, some boys breathe a sigh of relief at escaping the regimentation. But Cameron, showing a trait also evident in his father, managed his time as a student with the sort of ruthless efficiency that most people never manage in their careers. His relaxed manner belied a remarkable degree of self-discipline. By the end of his first year he had managed so to arrange his affairs that he reckoned he could complete his work in half the week and spend the rest of his time on other pursuits.
It helped, of course, that his new educational establishment was so like his old. Having developed a verbal fluency in tutorials at Eton, Cameron was always an impressive performer in similar arenas at Oxford. Brasenose’s PPE students were, in the words of one tutor, ‘quite a chatty lot’ and would readily confer with one another to thrash out problems with which they had been confronted. ‘David was an outstanding student,’ says one of his economics tutors, Peter Sinclair, who often taught in classes of a dozen or more. ‘He was very, very good at economics and his academic record was really unblemished. He was very endearing, and would be very supportive of the others.’ Sinclair points to a technique – perhaps Cameron would call it good manners – which has become something of a hallmark of his style in later life. ‘When he disagreed with something he’d really worked hard on and thought about a lot, he’d say, “Well, I don’t know much about this, but don’t you have a feeling that so-and-so,” when in fact he’d been researching quite carefully and knew so-and-so was probably right. He wouldn’t parade his knowledge arrogantly. His contributions in classes would be thought out and charmingly delivered, often to make a joke or make light of it.’
While in the abstract this might sound condescending – the public school boy playing the didact with his social inferiors – those who were there deny this. For one thing, there was little question that he was one of the cleverest. Vernon Bogdanor says he was among the brightest 5 per cent of students he has ever taught, and believes that Cameron’s influence was such that his presence in tutorials improved the grades of some of his contemporaries. ‘He was liked by his tutors since he was both courteous and stimulating to teach. He enjoyed an argument. It was clear from the moment he arrived that he was likely to secure a very good degree. I would have been surprised if he had not achieved a First. He is one of the ablest and nicest students whom I have taught,’ recalls Bogdanor today.
Outside tutorials he was popular with most – if not all – of his fellow students. ‘He was clearly an Etonian,’ says a Brasenose contemporary Steve Rathbone (no relation of Tim), who came from North Yorkshire and was state-school educated, ‘but he wasn’t swaggering around in a braying Sloaney way. Equally, he wasn’t trying to be something he wasn’t. He never tried to adopt an estuary accent, as many students do from major public schools, or wear right-on trendy clothes. He was a good mate of people from very different backgrounds.’ It must have helped, too, that he rarely forgot the little courtesies. Unusually, he would say ‘thank you’ to his tutor at the end of every tutorial.
He studied hard. ‘I do remember being impressed and slightly alarmed by how focused he was,’ says James Fergusson, an Eton and Brasenose contemporary who read English. ‘I was keen on my subject, but nothing like as keen as he was. He knew exactly what he wanted, which was to be the top-dog student and to get a First. That was it without a doubt. He loved it, he was passionate about it. At Brasenose a lot of life went on in the back quad, and you would see the PPE lot were having a good time. Dave would hold court in a classic Oxford way, quoting Locke and Hume. He loved it.’
His tutors, in recognition of his application and intelligence, upgraded his exhibition to a full scholarship. Cameron chose to continue with all three elements of his PPE course after the first year, rather than drop one and sit additional specialist papers in the remaining two as he was entitled to do. It is a testament to his self-confidence that he chose what Bogdanor insists was the harder path. ‘The tripartite option was the more difficult option, since it was harder to achieve an alpha standard in three such disparate subjects as Philosophy, Politics and Economics than in just two. During the time David was an undergraduate, fewer of those taking the tripartite option secured First than those taking the bipartite option.’
While university can be a time for experimentation and exploration, much of Cameron’s Oxford experience seems to have served to validate what had gone before. Peasemore remained close to him in more than simply a geographical sense. Some of his friends from Eton found his incurious side, his undeviating closeness to his cultural roots, a little stifling. While they were stepping gauchely out of the parental mould and exploring fresh fields, Cameron knew what and whom he liked and saw little reason to stray. He would invite his friends over to Peasemore to stay. Often there would be a lavish dinner, where his father – with characteristic generosity of spirit – would happily offer up excellent bottles of wine and port from his cellar.
One frequent guest at these occasions was James Fergusson, who admits he would be a strong candidate for the title of closest but most argumentative of Cameron’s friends. One afternoon, having recently returned from a mind-expanding stint backpacking, Fergusson remembers launching into Cameron: ‘I had just come back and was full of a left-wing vision of Latin America and I said very pompously to Dave, “The trouble with you is, you’re complacent.” It sort of bothered him, and I think he knew what I meant. The façade dropped. He said, “What do you mean? What do you mean?” I wouldn’t say he was blinkered, but he was quite safe, just utterly confident that the way he lived was the right way to live. He just didn’t see that it might be a bit narrow.’
If psychologically he was anchored to his upbringing, intellectually he was more challenging. Vernon Bogdanor has called him a classic Tory pragmatist, and it has often been said that his politics, first really in evidence in his studies at Oxford, is non-ideological. But James Fergusson says the guiding light is clear. ‘He thinks exactly like the philosopher David Hume,’ he says. ‘He’s a complete sceptic…it’s all about throwing out dogma and starting again from scratch. The revolutionary side of the early philosophers is precisely what turned him on.’
His fellow students tended to be left of centre, but not radically so. The SDP was well represented among his contemporaries, but there was never any doubt of Cameron’s allegiance to Margaret Thatcher. At a time when the country was polarised and a great many people despised the Tories, Cameron might well have become a remote or even hated figure. ‘After David Hume, he loved the free market and Thatcher,’ remembers Fergusson. ‘There was a strand of loving Thatcher in a tongue-in-cheek way. “Marvellous,” he would say, as if he was imitating an old buffer. He was always funny enough and clever enough so you couldn’t lampoon him for it, but at heart he believed it.’ Personal likeability seems to have done much to make his politics more acceptable to non-Tories.
Fergusson’s room in their first year at Brasenose was on Staircase 15, four doors down the corridor from Cameron’s, and they spent a great deal of time together. Fergusson was learning the guitar, not with unqualified success, and would pick away at Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’ and the Who’s ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ while waiting for Cameron to finish an essay and go for a drink with him. ‘He partied too, but he was incredibly organised about it,’ says Fergusson. The Brasenose of Cameron’s era has been written about almost as if it was Dorothy Parker’s Algonquin, not least by those with an interest in it being so. It was, though, a small pond where Cameron thrived, developing his interest in repartee and wordplay with Din Cellan-Jones, James Fergusson, Toby Young, Tim Harrison, James Delingpole, Will McDonald and Mark Mitchell. ‘There was a core of