In a triumph of svelte youth over rugged experience, Britain's opposition Conservatives chose David Cameron on Tuesday as their new leader and likely candidate for prime minister in the next elections.
Cameron, a 39-year-old product of some of Britain's elite places of learning -- Eton College and Oxford University -- defeated David Davis, 56, a former Special Forces reservist brought up by a single mother in a housing project.
Cameron had been the favorite despite sustained efforts by interviewers to establish whether he had abused drugs as a student.
With his youthful looks and sleek self-confidence in front of the cameras, Cameron has been compared with the young Tony Blair, who took over the Labor Party in 1994 at the age of 41. Like Cameron today, Blair was described at the time as a telegenic political moderate. And like Cameron, Blair's self-confidence reflected educational credentials from private schools and Oxford.
The leadership contest began when the Tories, led by Michael Howard, suffered their third successive election defeat in May by Blair and the Labor Party.
Conservative legislators in the House of Commons narrowed a field of five contenders to the final two, Cameron and Davis. The final choice was made in a lengthy ballot among some 250,000 party members across the country. Cameron got 134,446 votes, more than double the 64,398 given to his opponent. He is now positioned to bid for the prime minister's job; elections must be held by 2010.
Before that, Cameron says, he wants to renew the Tories to win back the center in British politics, which the governing Labor Party has occupied since it expelled them from power in 1997.
"We have to change in order for people to trust us," Cameron said in an acceptance speech as he became the fifth leader in eight years for the Conservatives, who ruled Britain for much of the 20th century under former prime ministers such as Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher.
Pledging to end what he called the "scandalous" under-representation of women in the party, he declared: "I want us to give this country a modern compassionate Conservatism that is right for our times and right for our country."
Blair renewed his party when he took over, abolishing its historic commitment to state ownership. But the Conservatives face even deeper troubles as they seek a new identity without a single issue to symbolize renewal.
Cameron has promised to give the party a more youthful and inclusive profile, looking for support beyond its power base, largely among middle-class southerners. He has shied away from the tax-cutting promises and the harsh anti-Europe sentiments of the Conservative right and has promised a more compassionate party to win the votes of inner-city dwellers and women.
In parliament he voted in favor of the Iraq invasion, but against proposed terror laws providing for 90 days' detention of suspects without charge. He was against Britain's ban on hunting with dogs.
His critics maintain that his talk is just that: talk bereft of well thought out policies on crucial issues like the future of public services, which are still creaky despite Labor's extensive investments in health and schooling.
Some argue that he is inexperienced, with only four years as a legislator. But his supporters point to his years working as an aide alongside older politicians both before and after becoming a communications executive at a commercial television station from 1994 to 2001.
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