David Cameron: Britain’s youthful new prime minister PROFILE 05/13/2010

David Cameron: Britain’s youthful new prime minister

PROFILE 05/13/2010 LONDON — Conservative leader David Cameron, Britain’s new premier, is a media-savvy modernizer often compared to Tony Blair for transforming his party to make it electable after years in the wilderness. Unlike Blair, who swept into Downing Street on a landslide in 1997 and stayed a decade, Cameron had to hold his nerve over five tense days of haggling to forge a power-sharing deal with the Liberal Democrats. But the 43-year-old has the edge over the former Labour premier in at least one sense: He is a few months younger as he takes office, becoming Britain’s youngest government leader for around two centuries. The smooth rise to power of Cameron, who was singled out early as a star of the party once led by Margaret Thatcher, was given a jolt by the Conservatives’ failure to win an outright majority in last week’s general election. Though he eventually got his wish to become prime minister, the man who has never even served as a minister must now hold together a potentially unruly coalition and grapple with Britain’s record public deficit. Cameron was educated at the elite Eton College, Princes William and Harry’s old school, and Oxford University, where he was a member of rowdy student dining society the Bullingdon Club alongside Boris Johnson, now London’s mayor.... MORE   Source:  The Daily Tribune URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100513com5.html

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