NEWSMAKER-UK's Cameron makes party contender for power

LONDON, April 6 (Reuters) - David Cameron, who took over a party demoralised by three British election defeats, has steered his Conservatives back to the centre ground, putting them in a strong position to end 13 years of Labour rule.

Cameron, 43, is demanding urgent action to cut a ballooning budget deficit and would take a more sceptical stance towards Britain's relations with Europe.

The Conservatives chose the privately-educated, former public relations executive as their fifth leader in nine years in December 2005 after losing their third successive election to then Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party.

When Cameron took the reins, the party was regarded as the "nasty party" committed to tax-cutting and reducing the size of the state.

The Conservatives had ruled Britain for 18 years under Margaret Thatcher and John Major but were now badly demoralised and casting around for a leader who could match Blair.

The self-confident Cameron, who comes from a wealthy background, set about pushing the right-leaning party towards the centre, trying to win back so-called "middle England" voters who helped elect Blair.

Cameron worked to update his party's stuffy image. Copying Blair's slick presentational skills, Cameron marketed the Conservatives as compassionate and environmentally friendly.

He also sought to recast the Conservatives as defenders of the state-run National Health Service.

NOT ALL PLAIN SAILING

Cameron has led the Conservatives in a consistent opinion poll lead over Labour, except for a few months after Blair stepped down as Labour leader in mid-2007 and his successor, long-serving finance minister Gordon Brown, enjoyed a brief honeymoon with voters.

But it has not always been plain-sailing for Cameron.

Some voters were put off by the privileged aura of a man who was educated at Eton, the country's most exclusive private school, and he has faced an occasional backlash by right-wingers in the party unhappy with his modernising ways.

Those cries have grown louder in recent weeks as the Conservatives' poll lead has dwindled.

Some critics say the party overdid its "age of austerity" rhetoric, its hair-shirt talk about cutting costs to tackle a huge public deficit scaring off potential supporters.

Cameron has toned down the message and the party has now pledged to spare most workers a payroll tax rise Labour plans to introduce next year.

PERSONAL TRAGEDY

The son of a stockbroker, Cameron went from Eton to Oxford University, where he joined the elitist Bullingdon dining club and gained a first-class degree in politics, philosophy and economics.

His wife Samantha, the creative director of a leather goods company, is the daughter of a baronet.

The couple suffered a personal tragedy in February 2009 when their six-year-old son Ivan, who suffered from severe cerebral palsy and epilepsy, died. Cameron said his death left his family with a "hole in our life so big that words can't describe it".

They have two surviving children -- Nancy, who is now six, and Arthur, four, and are expecting another baby in September.

He likes to portray himself as an ordinary 40-something dad, naming The Smiths and Radiohead among his favourite rock bands.

The family has homes in a fashionable area of west London and Oxfordshire and Cameron enjoys the upper-class pursuits of riding and shooting.

Cameron has refused to deny press reports that, as a teenager, he had narrowly escaped expulsion from Eton for smoking cannabis. "Like many people I did things when I was young that I shouldn't have done and that I regret," he said.

After university, Cameron worked for the Conservative Party and was an adviser to the then finance minister Norman Lamont in 1992 when the British pound was forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, an economic disaster that became known as "Black Wednesday".

Cameron then became a public relations executive with media company Carlton Communications.

He failed in his first attempt to become a member of parliament in 1997 but was elected as member for Witney in Oxfordshire in 2001, beginning his rapid ascent.

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