Let us at least grant David Cameron one thing. The British system of politics and government is not well set up to allow a prime minister to retire at the moment of his own choosing. Over the past century, almost every PM has been forced out, by electoral defeat, political crisis or ill health. Stanley Baldwin, departing tired but in good spirits from Downing Street in 1937 after the coronation of George VI, is an exception. There are not many others. Unlike US presidents, who can predict the time of their departure from the White House to the hour, four years before it happens, British prime ministers remain playthings of the political gods to the end.
It beggars belief that someone as adept with the press as Mr Cameron did not choose his words more carefully this week. Politicians do not casually admit to career mortality, least of all at the start of a general election campaign. Mr Cameron, though, did more than that. First he ruled out running for a third term (before even succeeding in winning a second); then he poured petrol on the flames by naming three possible successors, all of whose next five years will henceforth be viewed through the prism of the contest that the prime minister has initiated. You don’t come up with that Shredded Wheat analogy off the cuff either.
So this was either a monumentally careless blunder – unlikely – or a conscious political act, the only remaining explanation. Yet it is hard to know which is the more foolish. Deliberate or not, it was a massively off-message announcement for a party that has been drilled for months to stick to the lines-to-take and to keep the political argument focused on Lynton Crosby’s chosen themes of economic recovery and Labour incompetence. If nothing else it guarantees that the Conservative leadership issue will now dominate Thursday’s televised interviews and Q&As.
Mr Cameron has presumably put the issue out there at this time because he wants to control the process. The Tory party is a febrile beast. In defiance of Mr Cameron’s strong polling numbers as leader, activist circles and Tory websites are often awash with leadership speculation, although until now in the context of an imagined Cameron defeat in May, not a victory. Yet Mr Cameron’s allies are reportedly so nervous about the prospect of a post-election attempt to topple him that the word has gone out to rally round the leader immediately after polling day. The prime minister’s comments are thus presumably a further attempt to draw that sting. The message is clear: don’t try to ditch Dave in May; he won’t be around for ever.
None of this reflects well on Mr Cameron. It suggests, on election eve, a leader who is more interested in himself than the country. It speaks of a prime minister for whom internal party manoeuvring again looms too large – as it has done in the past – and who isn’t very good at the manoeuvring either. To talk about your third term when you haven’t won your second (and barely scraped a first) implies a sense of entitlement that resonates badly. And it draws a big red leadership herring across the general election campaign and the next Cameron government, if there is one. It is hard to think that this will help the Tory cause in any way whatever.
And then there is the sheer incredibility of his plan. Mr Cameron says he will serve a full second term, if elected, but will not seek a third. This is a presidentialist fantasy. The party will demand a new leader well in time for the 2020 election. In practice, assuming he wins in May 2015, Mr Cameron will go sometime between the EU referendum in 2017 (which will divide the party anyway, whatever the result) and the summer of 2019. This may indeed be a very sensible goal. But he would have been more likely to achieve it by keeping it under wraps.
Ten years in charge ought to be enough for anyone, especially with the demands of 24/7 politics on today’s younger prime ministers, often with young families. Yet, in reality, few British PMs manage two full terms, let alone three. The fragmentation of the party landscape, amid the move to fixed parliaments, may soon disrupt the rhythms of British politics still further. In those circumstances, any idea of third terms could become a distant dream, leaving politics more than before as the art of survival.
