Johann Hari: Now we know where Cameron really stands

David Cameron has spent this week bluffing his way through interviews where he insists the Tory "grammargeddon" of the past fortnight was a mere presentational blip. But he is faltering, because a long-suspected secret has slid out. Faced with pressure from the right, Cameron caves - because that is where his deep blue heart is.

He abandoned his opposition to building more grammar schools, a policy he called "delusional" and "an electoral albatross", after just a fortnight of howling Heffers and growling Dacres. Which of his other new centrist policies will be burned away under pressure from his party's core?

This is an urgent question for those wavering liberals who have found Cameron's sweet-talk and photo ops on global warming, Darfur and hugging hoodies appealing. Anybody who checked the evidence could see he has never really believed in these issues. Only four years ago, David Cameron was known as a right-wing backbencher who mocked wind farms as "giant bird-blenders", called for "a massive road-building programme", supported Section 28, and jeered at the minimum wage.

But when I point this out, many potential Cameroons write to reasonably ask - so what? If he puts these policies into practice because he knows they're popular, what does it matter what he privately thinks? The atmosphere isn't affected by intentions, it is affected by carbon emissions.

Now we have an answer. It matters because a belief acquired in the name of political expediency can be easily tossed aside in the name of political expediency. If he will cave and adopt a policy he calls "delusional", he will cave on anything.

Let's picture a scenario where this is likely to happen again. David Cameron wins the next election with a small majority, and tries to put into practice some of the policies he has mooted on global warming, such as higher taxes on air travel. Which of his MPs would support it? The Parliamentary Conservative Party is full of people much closer to the views of John Redwood, the man in charge of the party's competitiveness policies. He says global warming probably isn't happening, and if it is, we should be happy because there will be more sunny days.

When the doors are closed and the cameras are banished, Cameron himself probably agrees too. Only last year, The Spectator asked him if he was really a Tory, and he smiled and said delphically, "Just ask John Redwood".

The Tory Party is a forest of Redwoods. Look at their actions across the country today. In the London Assembly, they are fighting to strip away free bus passes from schoolchildren and the elderly. In Scotland, their manifesto was rated 0 out of 10 by Friends of the Earth. In local council after local council, they are closing down mental-health centres and after-school clubs, whacking up bills for home visits for the elderly, and slashing budgets for vulnerable children - all to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.

The will of the Cameroons to resist this is weak. They know they should for the sake of the marginal seats, but their political convictions and class loyalties drag them in the opposite direction. Every time I delve into Cameron's past, I find more evidence of Cameron's real beliefs being drastically at odds with his public image. Look, for example, at the person he employed only a few years ago as his Chief of Staff: a young barrister called Alexander Deane. Deane campaigns hard against the ban on landmines, saying the civilian-slaying bombs "save lives" and "should be taken up once again". He insistently defends Australian Prime Minister John Howard's actions at Tampa Bay, where he turned away a boat full of refugees fleeing the Taliban and then, when they began to drown, insisted they were deliberately killing their own kids to gain sympathy. Deane says the problem with Britain today is that the middle classes have abandoned their mission of "civilising" the working class and now "adopt the manner, outlook and voice" of "chav Britain".

These are the real views of Cameron's confidantes and staff. Beneath the pretty pictures and "let the sunshine win" word-music, we can glimpse the agenda Cameron would really like to pursue. The party's policy documents reveal that the core of Cameronism is to redistribute money from poor to rich. They will close SureStart centres, abolish £40-a-week grants for skint sixth-form students to stay on at school, and end rights for part-time workers by pulling out of the European Social Chapter. With the money he raises, Cameron will cut inheritance tax - which is only paid by the richest 6 percent - and bring back the huge middle-class subsidy of Married Couples' Tax Allowance.

Instead of saying with a manic stare that he will cut the state back so the poor can bleedin' well get on their bikes, he is saying - with dewey eyes - that he is cutting back the ghastly inefficient state so those wonderful charities and volunteers can take over and really help the poor. It's the same policy in new shiny wrapping paper. As William Sloane Coffin, the US civil rights activist, once wrote: "To show compassion for an individual without showing concern for the structures of society that make him an object of compassion is to be sentimental rather than loving."

This is what Cameron wants to do now, while his party's right wing has stayed largely silent for the sake of the polls. How much further will he drift under intensified pressure of the kind we've just seen? Of course, Cameron is claiming that he has not screeched into reverse on grammar schools, and his position is the same as it always was. This is an Etonian insult to the intelligence of the electorate. On 22 May he said: "It is delusional to think that expanding a number of grammar schools would be a good idea." This week, he said expanding grammar schools in Buckinghamshire and other areas that already have selection is "a good idea" after all.

The reason he gives - an expanding population in these areas - is itself a lie, since the number of school-age children in Buckinghamshire and other selective authorities is actually falling. There is no demographic reason to grow the grammars, only an ideological one preached by the Tory base. As David Willetts pointed out, only 2 per cent of kids at grammar schools are on free school meals, compared to 12 percent in the surrounding areas. Grammar schools don't help working-class kids. They systematically exclude them.

The Tory leader knows it, but he has given in to his right-wing instincts and the foaming fringes of his party. David Cameron half-heartedly picked his symbolic Clause Four fight this fortnight, and lost. His liberal language is now exposed as the tinsel and baubles on a big Redwood tree.

j.hari@independent.co.uk

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