Face Off Part 1 of 2
By: C. Todd Williamson, III

Conservative Member of Parliament for the Witney constituency in West Oxfordshire David Cameron is one of the chief adversaries of British Chancellor Gordon Brown’s tax cuts as he made clear on the Parliament floor in March of this year.

“You are the Chancellor who has put the tax burden up; the Chancellor who has taken one tax down but put 99 taxes up," Cameron bluntly stated. "Your great experiment in tax and spending has failed.

You are an out of date politician wedded to state control." As a matter of fact, Cameron is known inside the House of Commons for his “weekly exchanges” with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.  Brown has all been tapped to replace Blair this June, so it seems as though the youthful Cameron has a head start on bashing the heir apparent to 10 Downing Street.  A graduate of Eton and Oxford respectfully, Cameron is armed with a top-notch education and a bluntness that serves as a reflection of his passion.                   

His arrival onto the political scene in 2001 came after years of venturing in the corporate world as the Director of Corporate Affairs at the London Stock Exchange giant Carlton Communications. After four years in Parliament, Cameron rose up the ranks swiftly leading to the heart of the Conservative leadership. At 40, Cameron’s appeal to young voters as a moderate member of his party has also attributed to his quick ascension.

Now that he is knee deep into politics, where exactly does he stand on the issues of policy that matter most to the people of Witney?

When he’s not lambasting Chancellors on tax issues, he’s breaking the mold of traditional conservatives. In one of his most recent engaging debates with PM Blair, Cameron focused on his stance on what he considers the quality of life.

“How we behave towards each other is one of the most important factors in our national well-being and quality of life. A civilized society is a civil society - in the literal sense of being civil to one another. Civility is what builds the institutions and traditions that make our society strong. Civility is not something you can measure - like the size of the economy or the productivity of public services.”

As the winds begin to shift to new leadership amongst the Western powers, emerging political stars such as the newly elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy and popular U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama continue to make positive headlines, a voice of a new generation is beginning to carry power on both sides of the Atlantic. 

On this April evening, Cameron decided to focus on the indirect contact of national wealth and its role in everyday life. “I am very fond of this quotation from Bobby Kennedy, which sums up why well-being is just as important as wealth.

Gross national product, he said, ‘does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.’"

The Whitney MP goes on, “If civility, like wellbeing, is not something we can measure, it is something we feel.”  

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