David Cameron
David William Donald Cameron, Baron Cameron of Chipping Norton, is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016, and as UK Foreign Secretary under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak from November 2023 to July 2024. Cameron was Leader of the Conservative Party from 2005 to 2016. He was Leader of the Opposition from 2005 to 2010, and Member of Parliament (MP) for Witney from 2001 to 2016. Cameron identifies as a one-nation conservative and has been associated with both economically liberal and socially liberal policies. Born in London to an upper-middle-class family, Cameron was educated at Eton College and Brasenose College, Oxford. After becoming an MP in 2001, he served in the opposition Shadow Cabinet under Conservative leader Michael Howard, and succeeded Howard in 2005. Following the 2010 general election, negotiations led to Cameron becoming prime minister as the head of a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats. His premiership was marked by the effects of the 2007–2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession, which his government sought to address through austerity measures. His administration passed the Health and Social Care Act and the Welfare Reform Act, which introduced large-scale changes to healthcare and welfare. It also enforced stricter immigration policies via the Home Office hostile environment policy, introduced reforms to education under Michael Gove as Education Secretary and oversaw the 2012 London Olympics. Cameron's administration privatised Royal Mail and some other state assets, and legalised same-sex marriage in England and Wales. Internationally, Cameron oversaw Operation Ellamy in the First Libyan Civil War and authorised the bombing of the Islamic State in Syria. Domestically, his government oversaw the 2011 United Kingdom Alternative Vote referendum and Scottish independence referendum, both of which confirmed Cameron's favoured outcome. When the Conservatives secured an unexpected majority in the 2015 general election, he remained as prime minister, this time leading a Conservative-only government known as the Second Cameron ministry. Cameron introduced a referendum on the UK's continuing membership of the European Union in 2016. He supported the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign which lost. Following the success of Vote Leave, Cameron resigned as prime minister and was succeeded by Theresa May, his home secretary. He resigned his seat on 12 September 2016, and maintained a low political profile. He served as the president of Alzheimer's Research UK from 2017 to 2023, and was implicated in the Greensill scandal. Cameron released his memoir, For the Record, in 2019. In 2023 Cameron was appointed foreign secretary by Rishi Sunak and became a life peer as Baron Cameron of Chipping Norton. His tenure as foreign secretary was dominated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Israel–Hamas war, and the Gaza humanitarian crisis. After the Conservatives lost the 2024 general election in a landslide to the Labour Party, Cameron was succeeded by David Lammy and retired from frontline politics. However, he maintains his House of Lords seat. As prime minister, Cameron was credited for helping to modernise the Conservative Party and for reducing the UK's national deficit. However, he was subject to criticism for austerity measures. In historical rankings of prime ministers of the United Kingdom, academics and journalists have ranked him in the fourth and third quintiles. Cameron was the first former prime minister to be appointed to a ministerial post since Alec Douglas-Home in 1970, and the first former prime minister to be raised to the peerage since Margaret Thatcher.
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