William Hague in the context of "John Major"

David Cameron was Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition from his election as Leader on 6 December 2005 until he became Prime Minister on 11 May 2010. His tenure as opposition leader was characterised by opposition to the Great Recession from 2007 to 2009, and his relative youth and inexperience before becoming leader invited satirical comparison with Tony Blair. Cameron sought to rebrand the Conservatives, embracing an increasingly socially liberal position, and introducing the "A-List" to increase the number of female and minority ethnic Conservative MPs.

Cameron had four Shadow Cabinets during his tenure as opposition leader. His Shadow Cabinet appointments included MPs associated with the various wings of the party. Former leader William Hague was appointed to the Foreign Affairs brief, while both George Osborne and David Davis were retained, as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer and Shadow Home Secretary respectively. Hague, assisted by Davis, stood in for Cameron during his paternity leave in February 2006. In June 2008, Davis announced his intention to resign as an MP, and was immediately replaced as Shadow Home Secretary by Dominic Grieve; Davis' surprise move was seen as a challenge to the changes introduced under Cameron's leadership.

Philosophy, politics and economics, or politics, philosophy and economics (PPE), is an interdisciplinary undergraduate or postgraduate degree which combines study from three disciplines. The first institution to offer degrees in PPE was the University of Oxford in the 1920s. This particular course has produced a significant number of notable graduates such as Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese politician and former State Counsellor of Myanmar, Nobel Peace Prize winner; Princess Haya bint Hussein, daughter of the late King Hussein of Jordan; Christopher Hitchens, the British–American author and journalist; Will Self, British author and journalist; Oscar-winning writer and director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck; Michael Dummett, Gareth Evans, Philippa Foot, Christopher Peacocke, Gilbert Ryle, Paul Snowdon, and Peter Strawson, philosophers; Harold Wilson, Edward Heath, David Cameron, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom; Hugh Gaitskell, Michael Foot, William Hague and Ed Miliband, former Leaders of the Opposition; former Prime Ministers of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto and Imran Khan; and Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke and Tony Abbott, former Prime Ministers of Australia; and Malala Yousafzai, Nobel Peace Prize winner.

In the 1980s, the University of York went on to establish its own PPE degree based upon the Oxford model; King's College London, the University of Warwick, the University of Manchester, and other British universities later followed. According to the BBC, the Oxford PPE "dominate[s] public life" in the UK. It is now offered at several other leading colleges and universities around the world. More recently Warwick University and King's College added a new degree under the name of PPL (Politics, Philosophy and Law) with the aim to bring an alternative to the more classical PPE degrees.

George Gideon Oliver Osborne CH (born 23 May 1971) is a British retired politician and newspaper editor who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2010 to 2016 and as First Secretary of State from 2015 to 2016 in the Cameron government. A member of the Conservative Party, he was Member of Parliament (MP) for Tatton from 2001 to 2017.

The son of the Osborne & Little co-founder and baronet Sir Peter Osborne, Osborne was born in Paddington and educated at Norland Place School, Colet Court and St Paul's School, London before studying at the University of Oxford as an undergraduate student of Magdalen College, Oxford. After working briefly as a freelancer for The Daily Telegraph, he joined the Conservative Research Department in 1994 and became head of its political section. He went on to be a special adviser to Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Douglas Hogg and work for John Major at 10 Downing Street, including on Major's unsuccessful 1997 general election campaign. In Opposition, he worked as a speechwriter and political secretary to Major's successor as party leader, William Hague. Osborne was elected as MP for Tatton in 2001, becoming the youngest Conservative member of the House of Commons. He was appointed Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury by Conservative leader Michael Howard in 2004. The following year Howard appointed him Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, a position Osborne kept after running David Cameron's successful party leadership campaign.