David Cameron used all his PR skills in front of the Treasury Committee – but only managed to tarnish his reputation further

The metaphor of politics as a sales pitch is often used, but it is unusual to see a political leader transform into an actual salesperson on live video, writes John Rentoul

David Cameron giving evidence to the Treasury Committee of MPs on Thursday (AFP/Getty)

David Cameron, who had the skills to be a moderately effective prime minister, today tried to deploy those skills in defence of his personal reputation and managed only to tarnish it further.

He seemed to have two tactics: one was to plead guilty to minor offences; the other was to try to plead exceptional circumstances. “I was not employed as a lobbyist,” he said. He ended up lobbying for Greensill Capital only because there was a crisis.

He should have written a formal letter, but there was a national emergency on, so instead he bombarded ministers and officials with texts, messages and emails with “quite a lot of persistence”.

He stood to gain personally from his lobbying, but it was all for a “laudable” purpose, getting cash to small businesses and selling a payday app that was of “profound social benefit”. His motive was not personal profit but public service: “I believed Greensill could help the country.”

But this defence was undermined by his refusal to say how much he was paid and how much he could have stood to gain from his shareholding in Greensill. He tried to deflect questions by sounding as if he was being candid: he admitted he had a “serious economic interest”; that the company paid him a “generous annual amount – far more than my pay as prime minister”.

But he wouldn’t say how much. “The amount is a private matter,” he said. “Well, it is and it isn’t,” as Mel Stride, the Treasury Committee chair, responded. All Cameron would say was that the £60m figure that has been speculated about was “completely absurd”. Which is so unforthcoming that we are entitled to assume that the amount of money he stood to gain was beyond most people’s lottery dreams.

Cameron was able to fend off the suggestion that his lobbying for Greensill was so desperate because he knew the skids were under the company. “I don’t remember a sense of jeopardy,” he said. But what is left is so unattractive that this hardly helped him. He was a former prime minister, using his political connections to lobby for a company from which he stood to gain personally.

He insisted that he abided by the rules, but then suggested that the rules should be tightened up. He seemed to accept that his conduct fell short of the “broader test of what was appropriate” – although he tried repeatedly to limit that falling short to the process question of whether he should have written one formal letter instead of a barrage of 56 messages.

It was a skilful and fluent performance that damned him and demeaned him more than if he had stutteringly tried to deny everything. The metaphor of politics as a sales pitch is often used, but it is unusual to see a political leader transform into an actual salesperson on live video. It reflected badly on him, but I wonder if it said something uncomplimentary about the British electorate as well. When we bought what he was selling in 2010 and 2015, was it snake oil?