Underrating Cameron’s strengths reveals chink in punditry armour

Undeterred by his own cowardice, Sir Harry Paget Flashman won the Victoria Cross, the Order of Bath and the Order of the Indian Empire, mainly by showing up in the right 19th- century war zones at the right moments. It has taken modern Westminster, however, to give this made-up anti-hero – titular protagonist in the novels of George MacDonald Fraser – his real distinction.

Since he became prime minister, David Cameron has been likened to Flashman with a regularity that must leave the Fraser estate cheering the free promotion and counting the royalties. It is the – not a – cultural reference for those who see the Tory leader as slippery, bullying, steeped in undeserved success and the English art of veiling ruthlessness with manners: a Victorian rogue born out of time.

The line was trundled out last week after he made sport of the case for Brexit penned by Boris Johnson, the London mayor, and the dress sense of Jeremy Corbyn, the shambling Labour leader. Tories who resent their leader's EU policy lace that grievance with complaints of his brusqueness toward dissenters.

Personal style

Great questions of state come down to matters of personal style in this unideological party.

As should be clear by now, the Flashman line never leaves a mark on Cameron. The obscurity of the reference does not help. The nation does not share a literary canon and, if it does, these boarding-school capers fall outside it. It is also less often hubris that undoes Cameron than the opposing vice: an occasional eagerness to please. He called the EU referendum under duress from his own party. He chased a revision of Britain’s membership terms because he could not bring himself to tell Eurosceptics that the status quo was eminently tolerable.

Voters denied him a parliamentary majority in 2010 because they feared his party might have its way with him.

But the problem goes deeper. The Flashman parallel inadvertently airs Cameron’s strengths, not just his flaws.

Chronic underestimation of this prime minister is a glitch among pundits. He is on his fourth Labour leader, in his second term, having fronted the Tories for a decade. This durability should suggest he is more than a chancer who acquired his eminence in a fit of absent-mindedness.

If his critics have him wrong, it is because they have voters wrong. They suspect him of not possessing a coherent philosophy, as if any normal person does. He coasts, they say, as if the average Briton equates maniacal diligence with sound judgment. And they accuse him of egotism as if that is a wholly unattractive trait.

People want their national leader to be slightly arrogant and ruthless, or at least they despise the opposite qualities of meekness and timidity. Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair amassed reputations for high-handedness on their way to the six election victories they share between them.

When Corbyn's predecessor, Ed Miliband, used the Flashman line against the prime minister, he should have known it would only throw his own watery persona into sharper relief.

Every politician has to have a defining flaw, and arrogance is the least bad. Calling someone cocky is like calling a film over-rated: it has the effect of piquing people’s interest.

Intellectuals blanch at this Darwinian side of politics but there is no disgrace in cleaving to the strong horse. People’s livelihoods can hinge on a change of government.

Subconscious trick

There is too much information from which to make a completely educated choice between candidates so we use heuristics – mental shortcuts – to arrive at a judgment.

One of these is the almost subconscious trick of smelling strength in a person and deferring to it. “This woman can tame those unions,” voters thought about Thatcher. “This man is good in a crisis,” they say of Cameron.

As a method, it skimps on detail but distils the essentials. And it means the arrogance that grates with these leaders’ critics is no electoral drag, at least until it spills into the self-parody of late Thatcher (or the younger Cameron, who really was Flashman redux).

The coming months will test this thesis. The referendum pits people unknown for their humility – Cameron, corporate executives, the EU itself – against a scrappier crew campaigning for Brexit. If the hype is right that we live in a uniquely counter-establishment age where the swagger of command is fatal, the leavers have an edge. But we do not.

Voters talk a much better anti-elite game than they play. General elections and meaningful referendums bear that out. Elites cannot pretend they are not grand people who speak de haut en bas. But they can make a virtue of it.

– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016