An Irishman's Diary

Gordon Brown: "You've got to name your successor". Tony Blair: "OK. It's David Cameron".

The above exchange, from the cover of the British satirical magazine Private Eye, is not as fanciful as it might appear. The British prime minister blatantly avoided anointing Mr Brown as his heir apparent during last month's Labour Party conference and many "old" Labour activists will fear that the satirist's cruel perspective is uncomfortably close to the truth.

Despite some recent turbulence in the opinion polls, the 40-year old Cameron - who recently sailed serenely through his first Tory conference as party leader - could well be in No 10 Downing Street by the end of the decade. Yet he is not as well known in Ireland as a prospective British Prime Minister should be.

Of course, it is also true that Mr Cameron has not yet demonstrated any great interest in Ireland - though his visit to Belfast last week, when he met the McCartney sisters, may be a sign that Irish affairs may be about to move up the Tory agenda from their present lowly position. The man who would be "in charge" if the Tories returned to power is the shadow secretary of state for Northern Ireland, David Lidington. Hardly a household name.

Mr Cameron was elected leader last December with a mission to "modernise" the Conservative Party after three successive general election trouncings by Labour. Commentators have compared his task to that of Tony Blair in the 1990s as he tried to drag a battered and despondent "old" Labour Party into the late 20th century. Mr Cameron has clearly staked out his desire to occupy the prized "centre-ground" of British politics because that is where Tony Blair found the keys to the kingdom. He has been derided as a Blair clone, notably when Private Eye published photographs of Cameron and Blair with the caption: "World's First Face Transplant 'A Success' ". In April, Labour dubbed Cameron "Dave the Chameleon" in a party political broadcast - which is a bit rich coming from a party which abandoned a string of "core" policies to gain power. (It may seem incredible now, but Tony Blair once campaigned against British membership of the EU (then the EEC), opposed privatisation and supported nuclear disarmament.)

As with Mr Blair in the early years, not much is known about what David Cameron really thinks though some insights can be gleaned from speeches and interviews. They suggest he is keen to reverse his party's (self-styled) image as the "nasty party" and develop rather more of the Clinton-Blair-Diana "I feel your pain" style. He has just adopted a new party logo - the quintessentially English oak tree - hinting at his effort to combine fashionable "green" values with "hearts-of-oak" tradition.

As always with the Conservatives, the fraught issue of Britain's relations with Europe is proving one of his most perplexing problems. As a sop to the fiercely eurosceptic wing of his party he has promised to take the Tories out of the "federalist" EPP Group (with which Fine Gael sits) in the European Parliament but has yet to deliver on this pledge. His wavering has already led to alarm among right-wing Tories, who seem concerned that he is distancing the party from the radicalism of Margaret Thatcher.

With an election at least three years away, there is ample time to develop policies and electoral strategies. In the meantime the British public is gradually getting to know the youthful leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition. Mr Cameron worked in public relations before entering parliament and has been an MP only since 2001. Like Blair, he is a public schoolboy from a privileged background who has a knack of appearing to empathise with the lives of "ordinary people".

The son of a stockbroker, he was educated at Eton and Oxford where he studied philosophy, politics and economics. He often cycles to the Commons, plays tennis, claims to like "indie" rock music, and is said to smoke cigarettes (though not in public). He is the first Tory leader to grasp the importance of new technology and recently launched a rather blokeish video web blog.

He is married to Samantha, a Baronet's daughter who works for the Queen's stationer, Smythson of Bond Street. They have three young children: Ivan, who was born severely disabled and needs constant care; a daughter, Nancy, and Arthur, born last St Valentine's Day. The family divides its time between homes in London's North Kensington (leading to claims that he is surrounded by "the Notting Hill set") and his constituency in Oxfordshire.

Oddly enough for such a "true-blue" figure, Mr Cameron has some Irish blood. He is apparently a descendent of a Waterford woman, Dorothea Bland - an actress better known by her stage name Mrs Jordan. She had a steamy affair with the Duke of Clarence in London in the 1790s. Their 10 "illegitimate" children were given the surname FitzClarence. Mrs Jordan was eventually dropped as mistress and died in poverty outside Paris in 1816. The Duke went on to become King William IV of Great Britain and Ireland in 1830.